With the first vaccine expected to be rolled out before Christmas, the chair of the NHS research ethics regulator, the Health Research Authority, Prof Sir Terence Stephenson, explains how we got to this point
On Wednesday, the UK approved the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine – those most at risk will start receiving it later this month. Over the past few weeks, successful results have also been announced in trials of other Covid-19 vaccines. And while this news has been largely welcomed by the public, many want to know if they have met strict standards of safety and effectiveness and how they have been developed so quickly.
Prof Sir Terence Stephenson is chair of the Health Research Authority, the government body responsible for ethics review and approving research proposals relating to health, and for promoting transparency in research. Here, he explains how researchers have managed to develop Covid-19 vaccines in record time, and how these vaccines will work.
