London-based Malaysian surgeon joins team in search of Covid-19 vaccine

CORONAVIRUS | London-based Malaysian surgeon Dr Amalina Bakri has joined a team at the Imperial College in search of the Covid-19 vaccine.

The team is running vaccine trials at the college's National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

"The first of the UK vaccine trials, led by Dr Katrina Pollock, has started at the NIHR Imperial Clinical Research Facility at the Imperial College.

"I’m involved in recruiting healthy volunteers and vaccinating them in the next few weeks," Amalina (above) tweeted.

According to the Imperial College website, the UK government has provided £22.5 million to the college to expedite the development of the vaccine.

The article said the University Oxford is also involved with testing another Covid-19 vaccine, with an additional financial aid injection of £20 million.

UK health secretary Matt Hancock announced the vaccine trials via his twitter account.

"The first human trials for vaccines begin in the UK on Thursday (UK time).

"We’re giving the two leading UK vaccine teams at Oxford & Imperial all the support they need to make it happen," he said in his tweet.

In Malaysia, the Health Ministry has been selected among the countries to join the World Health Organisation's Solidarity Trial. 

Its director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the trial is an international effort to test a combination of medications on Covid-19 treatment.

"The research, coordinated by the WHO across the globe, is an effort to gather data and compare the safety and effectiveness of a combination of medicine comprising Remdesivir, Lopinavir/Ritonavir, Interferon beta, Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine," he had said.

Currently, there is no vaccine for Covid-19.

The pandemic has caused countries all over the world to impose restrictions on the movement of the people and halt non-essential services to break the chain of the infection.

Malaysia also took necessary measures by implementing a movement control order (MCO) which began on March 18 and has entered the third phase.  - Mkini