Why a coronavirus vaccine could take way longer than a year

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

PENN PRESBYTERIAN MEDICAL Center is waiting for the wave. The staff at the Philadelphia hospital is anxiously bracing for the storm surge of coronavirus cases that has already swept over nearby New York and New Jersey, overwhelming those states’ health-care systems and stacking bodies in its wake.

“You go from thing to thing to thing, and at the end of the day you still have 20 things that you have to resolve because so much is happening,” says Judith O’Donnell, director of infection prevention and control at Penn Presbyterian.

Across the country, health-care providers like O’Donnell are facing these overwhelming conditions knowing it may be a long time until they can access a particularly useful weapon against this viral onslaught: a vaccine. Vaccines stop outbreaks before they run amok, as evidenced by more than two centuries of using the medical technology to successfully battle foes including measles and influenza. (See why vaccines are critical to keeping diseases at bay.)

Drug companies and universities are now racing to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, with at least 62 efforts currently underway, according to the World Health Organization. Experts are optimistic that a vaccine will prove successful, based on early evidence that coronavirus patients can produce antibodies, the proteins in blood that attack and neutralize viruses.

-snip-

If the past is any indicator, the world won’t have a coronavirus vaccine for more than a year, probably longer. The mumps vaccine—considered the fastest ever approved—took four years to go from collecting viral samples to licensing a drug in 1967. Clinical trials come with three phases, and the first stages of the current COVID-19 trials aren’t due for completion until this fall, spring 2021, or much later. And there are good reasons to allow time for safety checks. Some preliminary vaccines for the related coronavirus SARS, for instance, actually enhanced the disease in model experiments.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/why-coronavirus-vaccine-could-take-way-longer-than-a-year/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=Science_20200415&rid=FB26C926963C5C9490D08EC70E179424

[gibraltar72]

1. Cause Jared broke his Gilberts Chemical set and has moved on to playing store.

[qazplm135]

2. I mean comparing now to 1967 is a little weird

I don't know when we will get a vaccine, but I suspect the effort and funding will be effectively limitless, and we are getting better all of the time, so I suspect we will get one at least within a year or so.

[Initech]

7. Yeah we have science and technology on our side.

Plus we have billions and a massive global effort to find a cure for this thing. We will find one sooner than you think.

[Under The Radar]

3. Watch closely, it will be developed in Asia or Europe

... and if Trump is still around, will ban it from US distribution

[Igel]

5. And if it's developed in Asia or Europe

it'll have to pass through the FDA and provide the evidence necessary for the US regulatory system to approve it.

[Hoyt]

4. Not betting on it soon. First, they have to ensure it works. Second, it won't kill us.

[Ilsa]

6. I'm willing to bet we will need boosters

every year or three go keep titers of antibody up and the infection at bay.