• Question: How close are we to developing a vaccine for COVID-19?

    Asked by anon-251369 on 22 Apr 2020. This question was also asked by anon-251653, anon-252014, anon-252068, anon-252434, anon-253193.
    • Photo: Robert Ives

      Robert Ives answered on 22 Apr 2020:


      Hi. There are lots of ‘potential’ vaccines being researched and developed as we speak and a group in Oxford is actually starting human trials. Personally, I think if we can develop and make a vaccine that actually works sometime in 2021, then we (as scientists) would be doing very well. But it might take much longer. The average medicine takes something like 13 years to develop but there are technologies that make developing certain types of vaccine much quicker (a new ‘seasonal’ flu vaccine is made each year). Viruses change (mutate) over time so that they become better at fighting against anything that might harm them (such as the medicines and vaccines we might make) and vaccines sometimes don’t work for very long. The hardest (but most important) thing is to develop a vaccine that works long enough in the human population to actually slow down (or even stop) the spread of covid 19. We are still learning about how covid 19 mutates and it may be that giving people a corona-virus vaccine each year might become as common as giving a flu vaccine. Perhaps the two could even be combined in one vaccine?? Lots to think about, but hopefully so good news soon.

    • Photo: Melanie Krause

      Melanie Krause answered on 27 Apr 2020:


      The true answer is we can’t really predict it. I think the best case scenario would be in about a years time we have a candidate that is good enough to go into mass production and then be injected into humans. Usually it takes around 5 years to make a vaccine.. and for some viruses it is not even possible at all. That said, the chances that SARS-CoV-2 (thats the name of the virus that causes Covid-19) is one of those were we can find a vaccine are quite good, because people have been able to make vaccines for viruses that are closely related in the past.
      Another good thing is that there are currently over 20 vaccines worldwide in the making.. so wile a few will likely turn out to have side effects or are not effective enough.. there will likely be at least one that is good enough to be produced.
      Then again we don’t know how long this vaccine would give immunity for.. some vaccines are good if only given once and last you a life time… others have to be given every few years, but hopefully whichever vaccine ‘wins’ will give enough protection for us to all go back to ‘normal’ life! 🙂

    • Photo: Patricia Brown

      Patricia Brown answered on 28 Apr 2020:


      I can’t answer that, but there are already some great answers to this question!

    • Photo: Maria Marti

      Maria Marti answered on 28 Apr 2020:


      As Melanie said, there are good chances that a COVID-19 vaccine will be found. However, until scientists can give a vaccine to everyone, they need to make sure that it works well and that it is safe. This usually means treating first a small group of healthy people to check that the vaccine starts an immune response that will fight the virus and that it does not cause serious side effects. If this study works out, the vaccine is then given to more people to check that it still works and is safe regardless, for instance, of how old you are. If everything goes well, you can then give it to a bigger group of people and compare whether the people you just vaccinated are really more protected against the virus than others who did not get the vaccine. This all takes time, but is very important to make sure we put our efforts in developing a vaccine that will really make a difference.

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