The Oxford Vaccine Group led the clinical trials of the Oxford coronavirus vaccine, leading challenging urgent international studies in a pandemic with 25,000 volunteers enrolled in 2020 – an extraordinary achievement in setting up rapid and efficient global clinical development through to global licensure despite the limited resources of a university research team and a global lockdown.

In the first Covid-19 vaccine trials in Europe, we assembled a team of more than 1000 researchers from early February 2020 to develop the clinical programme at unprecedented speed and scale with the first volunteer vaccinated in Oxford on 23rd April 2020. The subsequent pivotal efficacy trials across England, Scotland, Wales, South Africa and Brazil, led to authorisation of the vaccine in the UK on 30th December 2020. It required judicious, innovative methodology to capture key data on protection, laboratory correlates of protection, and dosing, Further analyses showed protection with a single dose, the improved immune responses and efficacy with longer dose intervals, impact on transmission against early variants, protection against subsequent variants and the first analysis of novel correlates of protection (see full publications list).

We assessed the profile of vaccine-induced antibody responses, using systems serology, and T cell responses (papers in Nature Medicine) showing the breadth of immune responses to Covid-19 vaccines including neutralising and non-neutralising antibodies with Fc-mediated functions. The vaccine was licensed in over 180 countries, with more than three billion doses distributed, a major contributor to Covax and estimates that it saved more lives (6.3 million) than any other vaccine in 2021. OVG led global trials of a Beta-variant vaccine showing the profile of neutralizing antibody against ancestral and subsequent viral variants, studies of mixed schedules of vaccine products in LMICs and evaluation of the original vaccine in children. We worked with the CEPI on guidelines on enhanced disease, and advised international governments and global organisations throughout the pandemic.

We made major contributions in science communication by providing information to the public about the pandemic with numerous appearances in the global broadcast and written Outbreaks Ebola media and an ongoing podcast series. Our contributions in the Covid-19 pandemic were recognised by the award of Royal Honours to various members of the team and receipt of the Royal Society’s prestigious Copley medal (awarded to the Oxford vaccine team) in 2022.