'When can we get back to normality?' - Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group says things will move 'very rapidly through the first quarter of next year'
Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group Professor Andrew Pollard has told Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid that the NHS is ready for rollout and things will move "very rapidly" in the first quarter of next year.
Following the news that the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine has shown to be 70% effective in large scale trials, Professor Pollard explained the findings during an appearance on Good Morning Britain.
"We are really delighted with these results. What we're seeing here is that we have a vaccine which prevented hospitalisation and severe disease in those people who were vaccinated. We did have a headline figure of 70% protection - that was with 131 cases of Covid that occurred in the trials but, intriguingly we had a group who had a slightly different dosing regime and in that group, there was 90% protection against Covid in the trial.`'
With the success of the Pfizer, Moderna and Oxford vaccines, Piers asked Professor Pollard when he thinks life can start to return to normal.
"I feel enormously optimistic. We have the tools with these vaccines and also some of the new treatments coming along, that means we’re at the start of that journey to get back to normal," he said.
"We don’t have any of these licenses. We need the regulators to scrutinise all of the data very carefully and to make sure we have got everything right and to grant licenses for the different products and then we’ve got to get to roll out. The NHS is now incredibly well prepared for roll out so I’m optimistic we're going to start moving very rapidly through the first quarter of next year."
Watch the full interview above.
Watch Good Morning Britain weekdays from 6am on ITV and the ITV Hub.