An experimental coronavirus vaccine will go into production this summer at a “rapid deployment facility” before clinical trials have established whether the shots are safe and protect against the infection. The business secretary, Alok Sharma, said the £38m centre would allow manufacture to begin “at scale” this summer in anticipation of the vaccine being shown to work by the end of the year. The centre will churn out doses of vaccine before a larger facility, called the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC), opens next summer at the Harwell science and innovation campus in Oxford. “The centre, which is already under construction, will have capacity to produce enough vaccine doses to serve the entire UK population in as little as six months,” Sharma announced at the No 10 daily press conference, where a technical glitch meant journalists’ questions were read out loud because they were unable to ask them in person via Zoom. “But if, and it is a big if, a successful vaccine is available later this year, we will need to be in a position to manufacture that to scale and quickly,” he added. The rapid deployment facility would help ensure a vaccine is widely available for the UK public “as soon as possible”. Sharma praised scientists at Oxford University and Imperial College London for the rapid progress they had made with two experimental coronavirus vaccines. The first tranche of volunteers have received the Oxford vaccine, with Imperial due to start clinical trials by mid-June. In a further announcement, Sharma said a global licensing agreement had been finalised between Oxford University and AstraZeneca. Under the contract, if the vaccine is successful, AstraZeneca will work to make 30m doses available to the UK by September, with a further 70m earmarked for the US and the rest of the world. Sharma said the UK would be “first to get access” to the Oxford vaccine – comments that are likely to raise eyebrows around the world. Last week more than 140 world leaders and experts called for future coronavirus vaccines to be made available to everyone free of charge, amid concerns that wealthy countries would pay to be at the front of the queue. Boris Johnson cautioned in an article for the Mail on Sunday that there remained “a very long way to go” in developing an effective vaccine, adding: “I must be frank that a vaccine might not come to fruition.” The article is the latest to reflect a change in tone of the prime minister’s optimism. Last week Johnson stressed there was no guarantee a vaccine would work, though his chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, was more upbeat, saying: “I’d be surprised if we didn’t end up with something.” In April, AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said scientists could know as early as June or July whether the Oxford vaccine works. Researchers running animal trials reported last week that monkeys who received a single jab produced antibodies to the virus within a month. The vaccine did not completely protect the animals from infection but did appear to prevent them from developing the kind of serious lung damage that has claimed so many human lives. Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “We do not yet know which if any vaccine will work. It is more than likely that at least one will prove effective and safe. The most important thing is to get the infrastructure in place to vaccinate tens of millions in the population, so it is simply unknown whether opening a vaccine manufacturing facility is the best use of the money.” Sharma said that “in spite of the tireless efforts of our scientists, it is possible that we may never find a successful coronavirus vaccine,” and that six drugs that might help fight the infection had entered UK clinical trials.