ONE of the UK Government’s scientific advisors believes a British-made coronavirus vaccine would be a ‘game changer’ if approved – but we wouldn’t see the full effect until the summer.

Professor Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and a respiratory expert spoke to BBC Breakfast where he described the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine as a ‘game changer’.

It is widely believed that the vaccine could get approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency within the coming days.

Prof Semple said: “It can be stored at a more convenient temperature and it can therefore be moved around the country a lot more easily.”

On the importance of the vaccine, he said: “This vaccine is very important because not only does it generate the antibodies that protect you from being infected, it also generates these ‘hunter killer cells’ – T cells – that actually deal with infection.

“They help people who have some degree of infection, if a little bit of virus escapes and starts causing infection it can actually treat that disease as well in the people that have been vaccinated, so it’s a very good vaccine.”

MORE NEWS:

However, the approval of the vaccine doesn’t mean it will be a quick fix. Prof Semple believes that with the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine being rolled out, it would take until the summer before the vaccination programme allows for ‘herd immunity’ in the UK.

“Obviously, there is an urgency about this,” he told BBC Breakfast. “And we know that it is difficult to vaccinate lots of people at the same time – we’ve got a population of just under 70 million people and we’re going to move through them in an orderly fashion vaccinating people most at risk.

“The people that have been vaccinated will be protected within a matter of weeks and that’s very important.

“On an individual basis these vaccines are so good that they will protect individuals, so we don’t have to wait for this nonsense about herd immunity developing through natural infection, we can start to protect the individuals.

“To get the wider community herd immunity from vaccination rather than through natural infection will take probably 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the population to be vaccinated, and that, I’m afraid, is going to take us right into the summer I expect.”