Coronavirus Vaccine: Why Is It Taking So Long To Develop?
BOSTON (CBS) - As the number of coronavirus cases continues to climb in the United States and abroad, many are wondering why it's taking so long to develop a vaccine.
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Several companies, including Moderna Therapeutics in Massachusetts, are feeling the pressure to roll out a vaccine against the novel coronavirus as quickly as possible, and while new technologies have sped up the process, it still takes time.
Before a vaccine can win FDA approval, it has to be tested on healthy individuals to make sure it's safe. You don't want a new vaccine that's supposed to prevent disease to actually cause disease.
It then has to be tested on people in areas with enough cases of coronavirus to show that it can actually prevent infection.
All of this testing requires partnerships with other countries, institutions, and medical professionals to conduct the trials, and then researchers have to follow the study subjects over time and analyze it the data.
That's why Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says it could take a year to a year-and-a-half before a vaccine is widely available for public use.
Right now there is no specific treatment for coronavirus, so while the world anxiously awaits a vaccine, scientists are also testing and developing potential treatments.
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Some are testing old antivirals to see if they have activity against coronavirus. One has already been used to treat a patient in the U.S. and will be studied on a larger scale in Asia this month. Another company hopes to begin testing a new antibody treatment in human trials over the summer.
So there is a chance we'll have an effective treatment for coronavirus before we have a viable vaccine.
