Oxford University will start human testing with a Covid-19 vaccine they developed from Thursday, the UK government said in a coronavirus press conference.

The Oxford team – led by Professor Sarah Gilbert, is testing ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, a candidate based on a chimpanzee adenovirus modified to include the spike or ‘S’ protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

The vaccine project, which is being run by the Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group, will also receive a further £20 million in funding from the Government.

According to The New York Times, the researchers plan to carry out mid-stage efficacy trials of the vaccine. “They then plan to expand the trial group to older age groups later, and hope to run a final phase trial with around 5,000 volunteers in the late summer,” the report said. They scale it up to a million doses by September – and hundreds of millions by the end of the year.