Progress on COVID-19 vaccine projects at Jefferson, Inovio

CENTER CITY (WPVI) -- There's movement on 3 of the many potential vaccines for COVID-19.

Two are being developed in the Philadelphia area.

The U-S is investing $1 billion dollars into the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine.

It's in human trials, but also in macaque monkeys, where it created good immunity.

Meantime, Jefferson University says a company in India, Bharat Biotech, will make its vaccine for outside the U-S.

Coravax is built on a widely-used rabies vaccine.

"I think we're pretty safe with our rabies vaccine, ' cause I mean that's in millions of people already, so we don't expect any unseen problems when testing this vaccine," says Dr. Matthias Schnell of the Jefferson Vaccine Center..

Dr. Schnell says Coravax generated good immunity in animal tests.

Exact measures of immunity should be known by next week.

Human trials could start late this year.

And Inovio Pharmaceuticals in Plymouth Meeting is also reporting promising results from animal tests.

It says its vaccine created antibodies in the lungs of animals.