Oxford Vaccine ChAdOx1 BDBV Administered to First Human Volunteer

British volunteer Ed Hunt, 37, became the first person to receive the Oxford‑developed Ebola vaccine ChAdOx1 BDBV. The vaccine, created by the Oxford Vaccine Group and the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford, uses the same adenoviral vector platform as the AstraZeneca COVID‑19 vaccine and targets the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which no approved vaccine exists.

The Phase 1 trial enrolls healthy adults aged 18‑55 to evaluate safety and immune response. Over 600,000 doses have been produced by the Serum Institute of India and are on standby pending successful results. The effort is driven by a worsening Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which WHO has declared a public health emergency, with more than 2,500 confirmed cases and over 1,000 deaths. Subsequent trial phases are planned in Uganda and the DRC.