May 12, 2020
The Race for a Vaccine Against Coronavirus
And they’re aiming for fall 2020!
Just over a month ago, we were looking at mid-2021 for a vaccine against Coronavirus. Now the language has changed; several potential developers are aiming for September 2020 to have a vaccine ready with millions of doses available!
Take the White House as one example, they have has set an ambitious goal of 100 million vaccine doses by autumn 2020, and 300 million vaccine doses by the end of the year.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is currently tracking eight candidate vaccines for COVID-19 in clinical evaluation, and 102 more candidate vaccines in preclinical evaluation. The table below displays the eight potential vaccines being tracked by WHO as of 11 May 2020.
Moderna, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, was the first to start human clinical trials of the vaccine, and the list goes on. China’s vaccine, developed by CanSino Biologics, was considered a top contender by WHO.
More recently the hype has been around The University of Oxford and Pfizer/BioNTech candidate vaccines, and their hopes of having millions of doses ready by fall 2020.
The University of Oxford candidate vaccine has been effective at preventing COVID-19 in monkeys. Human clinical trials started on April 23. Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, hopes they would have an indication whether the vaccine is effective on humans by mid-June. If all goes well, then it is a possible that millions of doses be available by fall!
Pfizer/BioNTech are currently testing four versions of the vaccine. They began human clinical trials less than a week ago, and hope to have millions of vaccine doses ready by end of 2020.
NOTHING is clear YET, and prospects change every day! What is clear though — is that it is a race. Incentives may differ. Be it saving lives or making profits, we are all rooting for the breakthrough vaccine. The sooner the better!
And sometimes, an unimaginable goal with a clear deadline is just what we need, to achieve great things! As John F. Kennedy eloquently put it:
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
Let’s have our vaccine by fall 2020!! I’m rooting for you.
