{"id":935,"date":"2026-07-27T06:33:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T06:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/first-person-gets-new-experimental-vaccine-for-ebola\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T06:33:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T06:33:46","slug":"first-person-gets-new-experimental-vaccine-for-ebola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/first-person-gets-new-experimental-vaccine-for-ebola\/","title":{"rendered":"First person gets new experimental vaccine for Ebola"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A 37-year-old UK man named Ed Hunt has become the first person in the world to receive an experimental vaccine against the Ebola virus. Hunt, who volunteered for the trial after seeing news reports of the deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said he wanted to help after missing the chance to join a Covid vaccine trial due to work commitments.<\/p>\n

The vaccine was developed at the University of Oxford in just eight weeks, using the same technology as the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid jab, which was administered to hundreds of millions of people during the pandemic. Hunt is the first of 50 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 being recruited for the trial.<\/p>\n

How the Vaccine Works<\/h2>\n

The experimental vaccine cannot give anyone Ebola. It uses a harmless viral vector to deliver genetic material from the Ebola virus, prompting the immune system to produce a protective response. Professor Teresa Lambe, who leads the Ebola vaccine team at Oxford, explained that the rapid development was possible because of decades of prior research.<\/p>\n

Phase One Trial Goals<\/h3>\n

The aim of the phase one clinical study is to assess the safety of the vaccine and to determine whether it triggers a strong immune response that could protect against the Bundibugyo species of Ebola. This species has triggered the current outbreak in DR Congo, and there is no licensed vaccine for it. While a vaccine exists for the Zaire species, it is ineffective against Bundibugyo.<\/p>\n

Global Response and Next Steps<\/h2>\n

There are four vaccines in development against the Bundibugyo species, but this is the first to enter human trials. The Oxford team plans to start a second small trial in Uganda soon, followed by a larger efficacy study in DR Congo. The Serum Institute in India has already manufactured 600,000 doses of the Oxford Ebola vaccine, ready for use if the trials prove successful.<\/p>\n

To date, there have been more than 2,500 confirmed cases of Ebola in DR Congo, including just over 1,000 deaths. The rapid development and testing of this vaccine represent a critical step in controlling the outbreak and preventing future epidemics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 37-year-old UK man named Ed Hunt has become the first person in the world to receive an experimental vaccine against the Ebola virus. Hunt, who volunteered for the trial after seeing news reports of the deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said he wanted to help after missing the chance to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":929,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhealtho.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}