![]() Perhaps because things had moved so quickly I hadn’t really thought about the dangers until that carpark phone call on Day 0. Some phone calls followed with questions – I’d been to Italy in February, where had I gone exactly? – and finally another email inviting me to be vaccinated, on Day 0 in group one of phase one of the trial. That day around 700 people in the UK died from Covid-related causes. Then there were interviews, physical examinations, tests and more tests, including blood tests, the first of many, increasingly painfully. There were then legal documents to be signed disclaiming any liability on the part of the University of Oxford for eternity, and a form for bank details. I was given a sticker with the number 5 on it and taken to see a socially distanced video of Adrian Hill, the director of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, explaining what was happening. No masks or gowns for them, or us, or even hand sanitiser, unsurprising given the severe national shortage in England at the time. Outside were some nervous young interns with lists of names. Ambulances were the only things on the road, and the few people around were fully gowned and visored.īut not at the the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine, where screening was to take place. The carparks were all but empty anyway, Oxford’s hospitals having cancelled appointments and barred visitors. ![]() Without any traffic the drive across the city took just minutes, meaning I arrived very early. The students and tourists had gone, the hotels, museums, colleges and restaurants all closed. Photo: Richard Adams.īy this point in April, the centre of Oxford was deserted. Help protect the world from a health crisis, and get free parking, too. And in another sign of seriousness, there would be free carparking, an unheard of event in Oxford. An hour later another email arrived telling me to come the next day, for two and a half hours. When was I available? I looked at an empty calendar and replied: anytime. The railway line to London runs close to my house, and entire inter-city trains – normally carrying hundreds of commuters at rush hour – were going by with hardly a soul on board.īut then things moved quickly: the next day an email invited me to a screening. “Volunteers will be required to make multiple visits over several months and must commit to remaining in Oxford for that time …” Well, I wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was anyone else. No, I’d never taken part in a paid medical trial before – wait, we get paid? ![]() So I filled in an online form with the usual stuff. But this was very local: volunteers had to live near Oxford, be aged between 18 and 55, and healthy. So I followed the link on Hannah’s tweet, expecting a grand scheme. Schools and universities had emptied, conferences and exams were cancelled, meaning that, as the Guardian’s education editor, I (temporarily) had not much to do. All but essential staff were working from home. Lockdown in the UK had begun the week before. ![]() “ For anyone who lives in Oxford and is feeling brave: the first UK vaccine trial is now recruiting,” she tweeted on March 27. I only heard about the vaccine trial through my colleague, Hannah Devlin, the Guardian’s science correspondent.įor anyone who lives in Oxford and is feeling brave: the first UK vaccine trial is now recruiting, expected to begin within weeks The Oxford vaccine trial launched with little publicity, because it began so early, at the height of international panic but before the reality of the long and debilitating nature of the Sars-CoV-2 virus had emerged. To be honest, I signed up more in fear of boredom than anything else. But up until then, bravery had nothing to do with it. And two days after that, there was me, lost in the carpark of the Churchill hospital. Oxford’s vaccine trial had started four days earlier, when the first two human subjects were injected and filmed and broadcast across the world. Since it was April 2020, telling anyone that you were at a hospital required more explanation than usual, so I told him: I was about to be injected with the new Covid-19 vaccine being developed by Oxford University. I can’t talk now, I told the caller, because I’m about to go into a hospital. Among them was UK-based NZ journalist Richard Adams. Six months ago, several hundred volunteers began participation in a clinical trial of the vaccine. At the forefront of the race for a coronavirus vaccine are researchers at Oxford University, who are working ‘with great care and due haste’.
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