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The race to produce a vaccine for the latest coronavirus

Feb. 28. 2020

Most recent vaccines have taken years to develop. But technological innovations and a more streamlined development process could dramatically shrink the time it takes to produce a vaccine against a new pathogen that has the potential to cause an epidemic.


The new coronavirus that emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December presents vaccine – makers with an urgent test. Scientists in China published the coronavirus’s genetic sequence on January 12th. By late January, several groups around the world had started work on a vaccine using these genetic data. The first clinical tests on humans, for safety, could begin as early as April. With luck, a vaccine could be ready within a year.

Next week the World Health Organization will convene a global meeting to set a research agenda. It will agree on rules, or protocols, for trials and work out which medical advances should be priorities.

Even if a vaccine were ready within a year, it would be too late to stem the current epidemic in China. But it could help other countries. It is too soon to tell how deadly the coronavirus is. But if it is at least as bad as seasonal flu, a vaccine for those most at risk will be vital.

The rush to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus has been led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), a group set up in 2017 in the wake of the west African Ebola outbreak. CEPI’s purpose is to forearm the world against future outbreaks of disease, without knowing what those diseases will be.

Scientists have produced vaccines against other viruses, including two other coronaviruses – SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) – using gene sequencing. The vaccine research on these two cousins of the novel coronavirus has come in handy in recent weeks.

Even if a vaccine is developed and approved, the rapid rise in cases of the coronavirus in China and its spread to other countries has created a new urgency: planning ahead for ways to make massive quantities of a vaccine quickly. There are not many factories that can mass-produce vaccines, so new vaccines often wait in a long queue.

Even if a vaccine can be produced in sufficient quantities, getting it to the people who need it, regardless of where they live, can still be a problem. This is a problem Richard Hatchett, the head of CEPI, knows all too well; he worked at the White House on medical preparedness during a flu pandemic in 2009. The outbreak had a very low mortality rate, but exporting any vaccine before it was available to American citizens quickly became a vexed issue.

The urgency behind the search for treatments for the novel coronavirus is understandable. Such efforts were effective in the case of Ebola. People are willing to rush vaccines and drugs into use for a disease with a fatality rate around 70%, as Ebola’s was. The calculus is different for one that kills 2% (or less) of those infected. Should hasty decisions lead to products that are not completely safe, people’s faith in vaccines could be damaged. If so, the harm done to the world’s health could rival the worst feared of the coronavirus.

 

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