<p>Kenya has joined the global clinical trial of Oxford University's vaccine candidate against the new coronavirus, the state medical research institute said on Friday.</p>.<p>The vaccine candidate, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, has been developed jointly with AstraZeneca and is being evaluated in four countries: Britain, South Africa, Brazil and now Kenya.</p>.<p>"To ensure that Kenyans can benefit... if it proves to be successful, it is important to assess its performance among Kenyan volunteers," the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) said in a statement.</p>.<p>KEMRI has already vaccinated the first volunteers after receiving the required regulatory and ethical approvals, it said.</p>.<p>The experiment in Kenya will initially involve 40 frontline workers in the coastal county of Kilifi.</p>.<p>If that phase ascertains the vaccine's safety, then an additional 360 volunteers will also be recruited into the programme.</p>.<p>The East African nation has seen a surge in the weekly number of infections in the past month after the government lifted some restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.</p>.<p>It has so far recorded 52,612 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 964 deaths.</p>.<p>The novel coronavirus has killed more than 1.17 million people, shuttered swathes of the global economy and turned normal life upside down for billions of people.</p>.<p>The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be one of the first from big pharma to secure regulatory approval, along with Pfizer and BioNTech's candidate, as the world tries to plot a path out of the Covid-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>Kenya has joined the global clinical trial of Oxford University's vaccine candidate against the new coronavirus, the state medical research institute said on Friday.</p>.<p>The vaccine candidate, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, has been developed jointly with AstraZeneca and is being evaluated in four countries: Britain, South Africa, Brazil and now Kenya.</p>.<p>"To ensure that Kenyans can benefit... if it proves to be successful, it is important to assess its performance among Kenyan volunteers," the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) said in a statement.</p>.<p>KEMRI has already vaccinated the first volunteers after receiving the required regulatory and ethical approvals, it said.</p>.<p>The experiment in Kenya will initially involve 40 frontline workers in the coastal county of Kilifi.</p>.<p>If that phase ascertains the vaccine's safety, then an additional 360 volunteers will also be recruited into the programme.</p>.<p>The East African nation has seen a surge in the weekly number of infections in the past month after the government lifted some restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.</p>.<p>It has so far recorded 52,612 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 964 deaths.</p>.<p>The novel coronavirus has killed more than 1.17 million people, shuttered swathes of the global economy and turned normal life upside down for billions of people.</p>.<p>The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be one of the first from big pharma to secure regulatory approval, along with Pfizer and BioNTech's candidate, as the world tries to plot a path out of the Covid-19 pandemic.</p>