Pedro Folegatti , one of the scientists at the University of Oxford, works day and night with dozens of colleagues to fulfill an important mission: to develop one of the most promising vaccines against the coronavirus, even if this involves sleeping only 4 hours a day.
Although experts have warned that the vaccine could take more than a year, Folegatti told the BBC that he has been working day and night, weekend and holidays, since the end of February, for clinical trials to take place.
The 34-year-old, who assures that this has been the greatest challenge of his career, is one of those responsible for conducting clinical trials, but has a very varied participation, from the conception of the study, the writing of protocols, its implementation and the monitoring of the volunteers.
"Having the opportunity to participate in this project is, without a doubt, the most exciting thing in my career so far and it will be difficult to overcome it," he said.
And it is that the Oxford vaccine has made world news after it was revealed that it is safe and has the ability to generate a positive response in the immune system.
In addition, Folegatti said that he has been working on the vaccine relentlessly since the time that Chinese scientists published the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence.
"I have slept an average of four hours a day since February," he stressed.
Although the process normally takes from six months to one year, the University of Oxford managed to reduce it to one month, but without compromising the safety of the volunteers participating in the study.
On the other hand, it revealed that the preliminary results show that the vaccine was capable of generating a positive response from the immune system and does not cause side effects unlike others, since recently Jennifer Haller , the first woman to receive a test vaccine against the coronavirus revealed that it had sequels.
"If that translates into efficacy and protection against the coronavirus, that will be known from the follow-up of the largest phase 3 studies and trials," he explained.
Now, the next step will be to find out if that vaccine-induced immune response is enough to ensure protection against the dangerous virus that has caused more than 624,000 deaths globally, according to the Johns Hopkins University map.
"It may be that the vaccine protects against serious infections, hospitalization, ICU admission, death, for example. It may be that the vaccine induces protection against milder and asymptomatic cases," he said.
However, he stressed that what is really important is that vaccines prevent death from the disease.
Meanwhile, it alerts society to verify the sources from which they obtain certain information in order to make a sound decision based on them, as waves of anti-vaccine movements have been seen lately.
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