On Apr. 23, 2020, University of Oxford researchers announced they had begun testing a COVID-19 vaccine in human volunteers. Around 1,110 people will take part in the trial, half receiving the vaccine and the other half (the control group) receiving a widely available meningitis vaccine.

The researchers started screening healthy volunteers (aged 18-55) in March for their upcoming ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine trial in the Thames Valley Region. The vaccine is based on an adenovirus vaccine vector and the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and has been produced in Oxford.