Original version

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

Science in Action

Science In Action

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

The BBC brings you all the week's science news.

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service East Asia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

Science In Action: Making a Covid-19 vaccine for two billion people

Magazines & Reviews

Making a Covid-19 vaccine for two billion people

23/07/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - Science In Action, Making a Covid-19 vaccine for two billion people

The challenge of making two billion Covid-19 vaccine doses within the year.

How to make 2 billion doses of a Covid-19 vaccine? New Covid therapy from llamas? Why do some mosquitoes prefer people? Did a mass asteroid bombardment cause Earth to freeze over?

There’s been encouraging news about the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine this week from a trial involving about 1,000 people. But how great is the challenge in scaling up from making a few thousand doses of the vaccine to manufacturing two billion by the end of this year?   Sandy Douglas of Oxford’s Jenner Institute explains how they plan to mass-produce the vaccine safely given the speed and magnitude of the scale up.  

A new kind of treatment for Covid-19 may come from an unlikely source: llamas and alpacas, the South American relatives of the camel.  Camelids produce unusually small and simple antibodies against viruses, including the coronavirus.  This feature may make these molecules an effective Covid-19 therapy.  Jane Chambers reports on research in Chile and the UK.

Also in the programme: Roland talks to Noah Rose and Lindy McBride of Princeton University about what has made just a few mosquito species evolve a preference for biting humans, and the theory that 800 million years ago.  He also talks to Professor Kentaro Terada of Osaka University and David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in the USA about evidence that the Moon and the Earth were bombarded by a shower of asteroids which plunged the Earth into a global ice age – an event which may have changed the course of the evolution of life.

(Image: A team of experts at the University of Oxford are working to develop a vaccine that could prevent people from getting Covid-19 Credit: Press Association)



Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Science In Action

Making a Covid-19 vaccine for two billion people

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

About BBC World Service