Category: Covid-19 Vaccine

If daring volunteers get their way, they will soon become infected with Covid-19 on purpose.

Theyre young. Theyre healthy. And they want scientists to give them a candidate vaccine and then deliberately expose them to the coronavirus, so we can all find out faster whether the vaccine is effective.

This is called a human challenge trial, and its controversial for obvious reasons: The volunteers might get sick or even die. But proponents argue that it would speed up vaccine development, and even if it gets us to a successful vaccine just a bit faster, that could still mean many thousands of lives saved.

You may have heard the recent good news on the vaccine front: Pfizer says its vaccine is 90 percent effective and Moderna says its vaccine is nearly 95 percent effective. Those vaccines were developed via conventional clinical trials, not human challenge trials.

Heres the difference: A conventional trial vaccinates people and then waits months to see if they get infected anyway while they go about their normal lives. A challenge trial eliminates the whole wait-and-see period by vaccinating people, exposing them to the virus on the spot, and seeing how well the vaccine protects them. Results come in extremely fast, and theyre reliably instructive because scientists can control all the conditions. They know exactly who was exposed, how big a dose of virus they were exposed to, and how their immune system responded day by day.

A human challenge trial is set to begin in London in January, assuming it gets final ethics and regulatory approval. Scientists have run such trials in the past for influenza, malaria, typhoid, dengue, and cholera, but this will be the first for Covid-19. A company called Open Orphan and its subsidiary hVIVO will run the study. Only healthy volunteers aged 18 to 30 will be allowed to participate. The challenge trial is not meant to replace conventional clinical trials the different types of trials will proceed along parallel tracks.

Many young people are clamoring to participate in a challenge trial. The advocacy group 1DaySooner has gathered the names of nearly 39,000 people in 166 countries who say theyd be interested in volunteering.

In July, the group sent an open letter to Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), calling for human challenge trials in the US. The letter was signed by more than 30 Nobel laureates and many prominent philosophers and psychologists, including Peter Singer, Steven Pinker, and Rebecca Goldstein. They wrote: If challenge trials can safely and effectively speed the vaccine development process, there is a formidable presumption in favor of their use, which would require a very compelling ethical justification to overcome.

So far, the US has not given the green light to such a trial, although the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is paying for the preparation of the viral strains that would be needed if a trial gets the go-ahead. In Belgium, the government has dedicated $23.6 million to facilities to host such trials, which may include Covid-19.

The UK trial will begin with an initial phase that isnt about testing vaccines at all; its about answering a preliminary question that lays the groundwork for testing vaccines later. The question is: How much of the virus does someone need to be exposed to in order to launch an infection?

Starting in January, scientists will expose a small group of unvaccinated volunteers (somewhere between 50 and 90 people) to a very low dose of the virus, gradually increasing it until they find the Goldilocks dose enough to infect most participants, but not enough to make them very ill. All participants will be dosed with the virus, as there is no control group, and all will be paid for their time. Theyll be sequestered in a quarantine facility for over two weeks so as to avoid infecting anyone else, and so that doctors can monitor them 24/7 and give them immediate medical care including the antiviral drug remdesivir as soon as they show signs of sickness.

Only after this initial phase concludes in the spring would the company (if it gets approval) actually inject volunteers with candidate vaccines to study their effectiveness. At that point, there would be a control group. Half the volunteers will get a vaccine, half will get a placebo vaccine, and all of them will be exposed to the virus, explained Andrew Catchpole, the chief scientific officer at Open Orphan, whos conducting the study.

But there is no reliable cure for Covid-19. So under these conditions, some say its unethical to infect healthy people with a virus that can cause death or long-term disability. Lets break down the issues at stake to understand if and how a human challenge trial for a Covid-19 vaccine can be done ethically.

One of philosophys most famous thought experiments is known as the Trolley Problem. It poses this dilemma: Should you make the active choice to divert a runaway trolley so that it kills one person if, by doing so, you can save five people along a different track from getting killed?

Consequentialists or utilitarians typically say yes, because youre maximizing overall good and consequences are what matter. Deontologists (also known as Kantians) typically say no, because you have a duty to not kill anyone as a means to an end and your duties are what matter.

A challenge trial is a little bit like a Trolley Problem. Were talking about potentially sacrificing a few healthy volunteers in order to save many thousands of other peoples lives. Again, the utilitarian would say we should go ahead with the trial because of its vast potential for good. But the deontologist may argue that we have a duty not to infect a healthy person with a life-threatening disease for which we have no cure.

Theres a crucial difference, however: The people getting run over in the Trolley Problem arent consenting to their fate. The volunteers in a challenge trial are.

Or are they?

Im not convinced that we can actually obtain informed consent from people given that were still seeing the emerging effects of long Covid, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University. She was referring to the fact that, for at least 10 percent of people who contract Covid-19, some of the diseases poorly understood effects ranging from brain fog to lung scarring to heart conditions can last for months. Scientists dont yet have a clear understanding of the risk factors for long-term Covid-19, nor can they predict its duration.

Some argue this isnt a problem: The researchers running a human challenge trial can just inform the volunteers that a lot of uncertainty remains about Covid-19, and that they might be signing up for long-term disability. The volunteers can consent to the uncertainty.

Rasmussen is not convinced. People are going to dismiss that, she told me. I dont think its possible to convey the seriousness by just saying its uncertain. Her conviction stems from personal experience: In 2014, she was on an NIH panel on chronic fatigue syndrome. Shed read the facts about the condition, but said she didnt fully internalize on a gut level the quality of the suffering it brought to peoples lives until she actually met people who had the condition.

Being physically unable to get out of bed and having doctors not believe you and having to completely change your life its not the kind of thing you necessarily can understand by reading an informed consent document, Rasmussen said.

Similarly, volunteers in a human challenge trial, who will be young people without experience of persistent illness, might not understand on an emotional level what it means to put themselves at risk of long-term effects from Covid-19. Data from previous studies suggest there is a gap between understanding health risk on an intellectual level and appreciating it emotionally.

Nevertheless, the philosopher and MacArthur genius grant winner Rebecca Goldstein said signing onto 1DaySooners letter in support of challenge trials was almost a no-brainer for her.

I have more faith both in peoples ability to understand the consequences of things, and in some peoples incredible sense of responsibility to others, she told me. Maybe its hard to imagine that there really are altruistic people, and we think, Oh, they just dont understand that harm could come to them. But I do believe there are such people.

Her conviction also stems from personal experience namely, her Jewish familys experience during World War II. I only exist because some of my Hungarian forebears were hidden by people who risked! They knew exactly what was going to happen to them if they got caught. And they did it anyway. To me, this is the same kind of thing.

Goldstein also argued that Rasmussens type of reasoning would have consequences we just couldnt live with as a society. We allow people to volunteer for the army, to become policemen, to become firefighters, she said. How is that any different? Theyre young and they feel invulnerable. Nevertheless, we need them.

Theres another complicating factor here: money. If volunteers are offered payment for participating, there might be a problematic incentive for low-income people to take part in a trial that could harm their health, which is arguably exploitative.

Volunteers in the UK trial will be paid, though exactly how much remains unclear; an ethical review board will decide how they should be compensated. Typically, though, Open Orphan pays people around $5,000 to participate in a challenge trial, which entails over two weeks in quarantine, plus coming in for follow-up visits for up to a year.

At a time when theres skyrocketing unemployment, its going to be attractive to some people to make a few thousand dollars by agreeing to be in a study like that, Rasmussen said.

Goldstein shares this concern. Im a little nervous about that, to tell you the truth, she said. It seems to me that muddies the incentive.

But Seema Shah, a bioethicist at Lurie Childrens Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University, said we should think about the flip side. If people arent compensated for their time, then they are being exploited. Theyre being asked to subsidize the research. That doesnt seem fair.

She suggested the solution would be to reimburse participants for travel to and from the trial site and compensate them for their time. Specifically, they should be paid wages equivalent to what theyd earn for doing any other sort of unskilled labor. In addition, they should receive free medical care, including for any long-term effects that may result from participating in the study.

This is in line with the wage-payment model outlined years ago by nurse-bioethicist Christine Grady. More recently, bioethicists have authored a report explaining how reimbursement and compensation could be ethically paid out in the case of Covid-19 challenge studies in particular.

That report notes that undue inducement does not seem to be a significant problem based on available evidence. Broadly speaking, that is the impression that emerges from interviews with would-be volunteers. Many of them seem to be motivated not by financial need, but by altruism.

The words of Danica Marcos, a 22-year-old prospective volunteer, are emblematic of their rationale. So many people are struggling right now, and I want this pandemic to be over, she told the Associated Press. Every day that goes on, more cases are going on, more people are dying. And if this vaccine trial could mean that this period of trauma for the whole world will be over sooner, I want to help. I want to be a part of that.

For his part, Catchpole said hes been quite staggered by the numbers of young people wanting to volunteer. We had over 40,000 applications within a week. They pretty much crashed our website and our phones. And were seeing a high percentage very openly stating those altruistic reasons to do their bit.

Initially, proponents advocated for challenge trials on the grounds that theyd help us discover a Covid-19 vaccine faster. But it now looks like a challenge trial wont start its initial phase until January, and wont begin actually testing vaccines until the spring. That doesnt really save us time.

By January, we may already have an Emergency Use Authorization for a vaccine thats gone through clinical trials, like the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. The reason these trials have been able to get results quickly is that many countries have totally failed to get Covid-19 under control. As the virus has ripped through populations, its infected enough people in Pfizer and Modernas samples that the scientists were able to get the data they needed.

So the case for a challenge trial has changed. Even though it might not get us to the first vaccine faster, advocates say, it could accelerate the development of better second-generation vaccines. After all, the first vaccine is rarely the best, and its likely a few different vaccines will come on the market in the next few years.

To me the question is, is the risk of doing a trial like this sufficiently low and justified by the value? said Shah, the bioethicist. And I think were sort of at a point where were pushing the bounds of whats been accepted in other kinds of research.

On the one hand, the value of getting us to a second-generation vaccine faster is significant. Generally, in order to bring down the cost of any drug or intervention, you need at least four other versions of it available on the market. If you think about trying to get the vaccine to countries that will have great need but wont be able to pay huge amounts of money, you can imagine theres really a need to develop cheaper vaccines for them, she said.

Whats more, a challenge trial could offer scientists valuable information about the pathogenesis of the disease, say, or about the immune responses that vaccinated people mount when exposed to the virus.

Rasmussen, the virologist, acknowledges that could be useful intel, but says its not urgently needed; a challenge trial can wait until we have a vaccine that we know is effective from a regular clinical trial, and better rescue therapies.

In the meantime, Rasmussen argued, the lack of diversity in a challenge trial will limit its scientific utility. A challenge trial is going to have to be done in young healthy people, and thats fine, but that isnt really going to tell us how the vaccine works in people who need it the most elderly people, immunocompromised people, and people with underlying medical conditions.

That said, its not like such a trial would tell us nothing thats of use to these vulnerable populations. If we have a vaccine that works in young healthy people, it may not work as well in the elderly, because their immune systems dont work as well but chances are itll still be effective to some degree.

Whats more, Catchpole said, Its as important to kill a vaccine thats not got any chance as it is to promote one that does. If we can use the challenge model in the younger population to see which vaccine doesnt have efficacy, we can get a very quick read and prioritize the next candidate vaccine.

So where does that leave us? Shah said that at this point, its not clear to her that the value of Covid-19 challenge trials quite justifies the risks. Im glad Im not the one who has to make the call, honestly, because I think its still a very close question whether theyre justified. Theres room for reasonable people to disagree.

Running through this whole debate is a fundamental question about human nature: Is true altruism possible?

Some people are highly skeptical that it is, and the open letter released by 1DaySooner this summer contains a fascinating paragraph betraying an awareness of that: Decades of psychological research on highly altruistic behaviors has demonstrated that a large, and likely growing, fraction of the general population is willing to undergo meaningful risks to benefit others due to genuinely altruistic motivation rather than insensitivity to risk, psychopathology, or other ethically concerning motives.

We can infer the implicit concern that people may be suspicious of someone who volunteers to get Covid-19 that they may assume any such volunteer must be irrational or incapable of understanding the risks.

This concern about altruism isnt new. A long line of philosophers and economists have expressed or observed suspicion toward altruists who are willing to incur a major cost to themselves in order to help perfect strangers.

We can see this, for example, in the 1982 paper Moral Saints by Susan Wolf. The philosopher observes that we dont tend to like extreme altruists (she uses the phrases a moral fanatic and a disgusting goody good) and says, there seems to be a limit to how much morality we can stand.

In more recent years, the Stanford psychologist Benoit Monin has demonstrated an effect called do-gooder derogation. Hes shown that we feel less warm toward people who are extremely altruistic. That may be because they make us feel moral conflict about our own behaviors.

And neuroscientist Molly Crockett at Yale has conducted studies to determine whether people prefer consequentialists or deontologists. To get at that, she showed subjects the classic Trolley Problem and the different ways of responding to it. She found that when people are looking for a friend or spouse, they strongly prefer deontologists, viewing them as more moral and trustworthy. People are suspicious of consequentialists. Its possible that that same suspicion is now being extended to extreme altruists signing up to be exposed to the coronavirus.

But scientific research has shown that some people truly are extreme altruists, who perform impressively noble acts out of a genuine desire to help others. Neuroscientists like Abigail Marsh have shown that extreme altruists may actually have neurological differences that make them predisposed to such extraordinary behavior; theyve got larger amygdalae, for one thing.

Steven Pinker and Peter Singer have argued that this is a more widespread phenomenon than we might think, one not limited to people who are biologically predisposed to extreme altruism. They contend that people everywhere seem to be becoming more altruistic overall. As societies become wealthier and the world globalizes, were expanding our circle of moral concern to include distant strangers. Hence the line in the open letter asserting that a large, and likely growing, fraction of the general population is willing to undergo meaningful risks to benefit others.

Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter. Twice a week, youll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges: improving public health, decreasing human and animal suffering, easing catastrophic risks, and to put it simply getting better at doing good.

Will you help keep Vox free for all?

Millions of people rely on Vox to understand how the policy decisions made in Washington, from health care to unemployment to housing, could impact their lives. Our work is well-sourced, research-driven, and in-depth. And that kind of work takes resources. Even after the economy recovers, advertising alone will never be enough to support it. If you have already made a contribution to Vox, thank you. If you havent, help us keep our journalism free for everyone by making a financial contribution today, from as little as $3.

Here is the original post:

Covid-19 vaccine trials and the ethics of infecting volunteers with the virus - Vox.com

If daring volunteers get their way, they will soon become infected with Covid-19 on purpose.

Theyre young. Theyre healthy. And they want scientists to give them a candidate vaccine and then deliberately expose them to the coronavirus, so we can all find out faster whether the vaccine is effective.

This is called a human challenge trial, and its controversial for obvious reasons: The volunteers might get sick or even die. But proponents argue that it would speed up vaccine development, and even if it gets us to a successful vaccine just a bit faster, that could still mean many thousands of lives saved.

You may have heard the recent good news on the vaccine front: Pfizer says its vaccine is 90 percent effective and Moderna says its vaccine is nearly 95 percent effective. Those vaccines were developed via conventional clinical trials, not human challenge trials.

Heres the difference: A conventional trial vaccinates people and then waits months to see if they get infected anyway while they go about their normal lives. A challenge trial eliminates the whole wait-and-see period by vaccinating people, exposing them to the virus on the spot, and seeing how well the vaccine protects them. Results come in extremely fast, and theyre reliably instructive because scientists can control all the conditions. They know exactly who was exposed, how big a dose of virus they were exposed to, and how their immune system responded day by day.

A human challenge trial is set to begin in London in January, assuming it gets final ethics and regulatory approval. Scientists have run such trials in the past for influenza, malaria, typhoid, dengue, and cholera, but this will be the first for Covid-19. A company called Open Orphan and its subsidiary hVIVO will run the study. Only healthy volunteers aged 18 to 30 will be allowed to participate. The challenge trial is not meant to replace conventional clinical trials the different types of trials will proceed along parallel tracks.

Many young people are clamoring to participate in a challenge trial. The advocacy group 1DaySooner has gathered the names of nearly 39,000 people in 166 countries who say theyd be interested in volunteering.

In July, the group sent an open letter to Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), calling for human challenge trials in the US. The letter was signed by more than 30 Nobel laureates and many prominent philosophers and psychologists, including Peter Singer, Steven Pinker, and Rebecca Goldstein. They wrote: If challenge trials can safely and effectively speed the vaccine development process, there is a formidable presumption in favor of their use, which would require a very compelling ethical justification to overcome.

So far, the US has not given the green light to such a trial, although the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is paying for the preparation of the viral strains that would be needed if a trial gets the go-ahead. In Belgium, the government has dedicated $23.6 million to facilities to host such trials, which may include Covid-19.

The UK trial will begin with an initial phase that isnt about testing vaccines at all; its about answering a preliminary question that lays the groundwork for testing vaccines later. The question is: How much of the virus does someone need to be exposed to in order to launch an infection?

Starting in January, scientists will expose a small group of unvaccinated volunteers (somewhere between 50 and 90 people) to a very low dose of the virus, gradually increasing it until they find the Goldilocks dose enough to infect most participants, but not enough to make them very ill. All participants will be dosed with the virus, as there is no control group, and all will be paid for their time. Theyll be sequestered in a quarantine facility for over two weeks so as to avoid infecting anyone else, and so that doctors can monitor them 24/7 and give them immediate medical care including the antiviral drug remdesivir as soon as they show signs of sickness.

Only after this initial phase concludes in the spring would the company (if it gets approval) actually inject volunteers with candidate vaccines to study their effectiveness. At that point, there would be a control group. Half the volunteers will get a vaccine, half will get a placebo vaccine, and all of them will be exposed to the virus, explained Andrew Catchpole, the chief scientific officer at Open Orphan, whos conducting the study.

But there is no reliable cure for Covid-19. So under these conditions, some say its unethical to infect healthy people with a virus that can cause death or long-term disability. Lets break down the issues at stake to understand if and how a human challenge trial for a Covid-19 vaccine can be done ethically.

One of philosophys most famous thought experiments is known as the Trolley Problem. It poses this dilemma: Should you make the active choice to divert a runaway trolley so that it kills one person if, by doing so, you can save five people along a different track from getting killed?

Consequentialists or utilitarians typically say yes, because youre maximizing overall good and consequences are what matter. Deontologists (also known as Kantians) typically say no, because you have a duty to not kill anyone as a means to an end and your duties are what matter.

A challenge trial is a little bit like a Trolley Problem. Were talking about potentially sacrificing a few healthy volunteers in order to save many thousands of other peoples lives. Again, the utilitarian would say we should go ahead with the trial because of its vast potential for good. But the deontologist may argue that we have a duty not to infect a healthy person with a life-threatening disease for which we have no cure.

Theres a crucial difference, however: The people getting run over in the Trolley Problem arent consenting to their fate. The volunteers in a challenge trial are.

Or are they?

Im not convinced that we can actually obtain informed consent from people given that were still seeing the emerging effects of long Covid, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University. She was referring to the fact that, for at least 10 percent of people who contract Covid-19, some of the diseases poorly understood effects ranging from brain fog to lung scarring to heart conditions can last for months. Scientists dont yet have a clear understanding of the risk factors for long-term Covid-19, nor can they predict its duration.

Some argue this isnt a problem: The researchers running a human challenge trial can just inform the volunteers that a lot of uncertainty remains about Covid-19, and that they might be signing up for long-term disability. The volunteers can consent to the uncertainty.

Rasmussen is not convinced. People are going to dismiss that, she told me. I dont think its possible to convey the seriousness by just saying its uncertain. Her conviction stems from personal experience: In 2014, she was on an NIH panel on chronic fatigue syndrome. Shed read the facts about the condition, but said she didnt fully internalize on a gut level the quality of the suffering it brought to peoples lives until she actually met people who had the condition.

Being physically unable to get out of bed and having doctors not believe you and having to completely change your life its not the kind of thing you necessarily can understand by reading an informed consent document, Rasmussen said.

Similarly, volunteers in a human challenge trial, who will be young people without experience of persistent illness, might not understand on an emotional level what it means to put themselves at risk of long-term effects from Covid-19. Data from previous studies suggest there is a gap between understanding health risk on an intellectual level and appreciating it emotionally.

Nevertheless, the philosopher and MacArthur genius grant winner Rebecca Goldstein said signing onto 1DaySooners letter in support of challenge trials was almost a no-brainer for her.

I have more faith both in peoples ability to understand the consequences of things, and in some peoples incredible sense of responsibility to others, she told me. Maybe its hard to imagine that there really are altruistic people, and we think, Oh, they just dont understand that harm could come to them. But I do believe there are such people.

Her conviction also stems from personal experience namely, her Jewish familys experience during World War II. I only exist because some of my Hungarian forebears were hidden by people who risked! They knew exactly what was going to happen to them if they got caught. And they did it anyway. To me, this is the same kind of thing.

Goldstein also argued that Rasmussens type of reasoning would have consequences we just couldnt live with as a society. We allow people to volunteer for the army, to become policemen, to become firefighters, she said. How is that any different? Theyre young and they feel invulnerable. Nevertheless, we need them.

Theres another complicating factor here: money. If volunteers are offered payment for participating, there might be a problematic incentive for low-income people to take part in a trial that could harm their health, which is arguably exploitative.

Volunteers in the UK trial will be paid, though exactly how much remains unclear; an ethical review board will decide how they should be compensated. Typically, though, Open Orphan pays people around $5,000 to participate in a challenge trial, which entails over two weeks in quarantine, plus coming in for follow-up visits for up to a year.

At a time when theres skyrocketing unemployment, its going to be attractive to some people to make a few thousand dollars by agreeing to be in a study like that, Rasmussen said.

Goldstein shares this concern. Im a little nervous about that, to tell you the truth, she said. It seems to me that muddies the incentive.

But Seema Shah, a bioethicist at Lurie Childrens Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University, said we should think about the flip side. If people arent compensated for their time, then they are being exploited. Theyre being asked to subsidize the research. That doesnt seem fair.

She suggested the solution would be to reimburse participants for travel to and from the trial site and compensate them for their time. Specifically, they should be paid wages equivalent to what theyd earn for doing any other sort of unskilled labor. In addition, they should receive free medical care, including for any long-term effects that may result from participating in the study.

This is in line with the wage-payment model outlined years ago by nurse-bioethicist Christine Grady. More recently, bioethicists have authored a report explaining how reimbursement and compensation could be ethically paid out in the case of Covid-19 challenge studies in particular.

That report notes that undue inducement does not seem to be a significant problem based on available evidence. Broadly speaking, that is the impression that emerges from interviews with would-be volunteers. Many of them seem to be motivated not by financial need, but by altruism.

The words of Danica Marcos, a 22-year-old prospective volunteer, are emblematic of their rationale. So many people are struggling right now, and I want this pandemic to be over, she told the Associated Press. Every day that goes on, more cases are going on, more people are dying. And if this vaccine trial could mean that this period of trauma for the whole world will be over sooner, I want to help. I want to be a part of that.

For his part, Catchpole said hes been quite staggered by the numbers of young people wanting to volunteer. We had over 40,000 applications within a week. They pretty much crashed our website and our phones. And were seeing a high percentage very openly stating those altruistic reasons to do their bit.

Initially, proponents advocated for challenge trials on the grounds that theyd help us discover a Covid-19 vaccine faster. But it now looks like a challenge trial wont start its initial phase until January, and wont begin actually testing vaccines until the spring. That doesnt really save us time.

By January, we may already have an Emergency Use Authorization for a vaccine thats gone through clinical trials, like the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. The reason these trials have been able to get results quickly is that many countries have totally failed to get Covid-19 under control. As the virus has ripped through populations, its infected enough people in Pfizer and Modernas samples that the scientists were able to get the data they needed.

So the case for a challenge trial has changed. Even though it might not get us to the first vaccine faster, advocates say, it could accelerate the development of better second-generation vaccines. After all, the first vaccine is rarely the best, and its likely a few different vaccines will come on the market in the next few years.

To me the question is, is the risk of doing a trial like this sufficiently low and justified by the value? said Shah, the bioethicist. And I think were sort of at a point where were pushing the bounds of whats been accepted in other kinds of research.

On the one hand, the value of getting us to a second-generation vaccine faster is significant. Generally, in order to bring down the cost of any drug or intervention, you need at least four other versions of it available on the market. If you think about trying to get the vaccine to countries that will have great need but wont be able to pay huge amounts of money, you can imagine theres really a need to develop cheaper vaccines for them, she said.

Whats more, a challenge trial could offer scientists valuable information about the pathogenesis of the disease, say, or about the immune responses that vaccinated people mount when exposed to the virus.

Rasmussen, the virologist, acknowledges that could be useful intel, but says its not urgently needed; a challenge trial can wait until we have a vaccine that we know is effective from a regular clinical trial, and better rescue therapies.

In the meantime, Rasmussen argued, the lack of diversity in a challenge trial will limit its scientific utility. A challenge trial is going to have to be done in young healthy people, and thats fine, but that isnt really going to tell us how the vaccine works in people who need it the most elderly people, immunocompromised people, and people with underlying medical conditions.

That said, its not like such a trial would tell us nothing thats of use to these vulnerable populations. If we have a vaccine that works in young healthy people, it may not work as well in the elderly, because their immune systems dont work as well but chances are itll still be effective to some degree.

Whats more, Catchpole said, Its as important to kill a vaccine thats not got any chance as it is to promote one that does. If we can use the challenge model in the younger population to see which vaccine doesnt have efficacy, we can get a very quick read and prioritize the next candidate vaccine.

So where does that leave us? Shah said that at this point, its not clear to her that the value of Covid-19 challenge trials quite justifies the risks. Im glad Im not the one who has to make the call, honestly, because I think its still a very close question whether theyre justified. Theres room for reasonable people to disagree.

Running through this whole debate is a fundamental question about human nature: Is true altruism possible?

Some people are highly skeptical that it is, and the open letter released by 1DaySooner this summer contains a fascinating paragraph betraying an awareness of that: Decades of psychological research on highly altruistic behaviors has demonstrated that a large, and likely growing, fraction of the general population is willing to undergo meaningful risks to benefit others due to genuinely altruistic motivation rather than insensitivity to risk, psychopathology, or other ethically concerning motives.

We can infer the implicit concern that people may be suspicious of someone who volunteers to get Covid-19 that they may assume any such volunteer must be irrational or incapable of understanding the risks.

This concern about altruism isnt new. A long line of philosophers and economists have expressed or observed suspicion toward altruists who are willing to incur a major cost to themselves in order to help perfect strangers.

We can see this, for example, in the 1982 paper Moral Saints by Susan Wolf. The philosopher observes that we dont tend to like extreme altruists (she uses the phrases a moral fanatic and a disgusting goody good) and says, there seems to be a limit to how much morality we can stand.

In more recent years, the Stanford psychologist Benoit Monin has demonstrated an effect called do-gooder derogation. Hes shown that we feel less warm toward people who are extremely altruistic. That may be because they make us feel moral conflict about our own behaviors.

And neuroscientist Molly Crockett at Yale has conducted studies to determine whether people prefer consequentialists or deontologists. To get at that, she showed subjects the classic Trolley Problem and the different ways of responding to it. She found that when people are looking for a friend or spouse, they strongly prefer deontologists, viewing them as more moral and trustworthy. People are suspicious of consequentialists. Its possible that that same suspicion is now being extended to extreme altruists signing up to be exposed to the coronavirus.

But scientific research has shown that some people truly are extreme altruists, who perform impressively noble acts out of a genuine desire to help others. Neuroscientists like Abigail Marsh have shown that extreme altruists may actually have neurological differences that make them predisposed to such extraordinary behavior; theyve got larger amygdalae, for one thing.

Steven Pinker and Peter Singer have argued that this is a more widespread phenomenon than we might think, one not limited to people who are biologically predisposed to extreme altruism. They contend that people everywhere seem to be becoming more altruistic overall. As societies become wealthier and the world globalizes, were expanding our circle of moral concern to include distant strangers. Hence the line in the open letter asserting that a large, and likely growing, fraction of the general population is willing to undergo meaningful risks to benefit others.

Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter. Twice a week, youll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges: improving public health, decreasing human and animal suffering, easing catastrophic risks, and to put it simply getting better at doing good.

Will you help keep Vox free for all?

Millions of people rely on Vox to understand how the policy decisions made in Washington, from health care to unemployment to housing, could impact their lives. Our work is well-sourced, research-driven, and in-depth. And that kind of work takes resources. Even after the economy recovers, advertising alone will never be enough to support it. If you have already made a contribution to Vox, thank you. If you havent, help us keep our journalism free for everyone by making a financial contribution today, from as little as $3.

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Covid-19 vaccine trials and the ethics of infecting volunteers with the virus - Vox.com

Health officials in Illinois are continuing to lay out their plans for distribution of a coronavirus vaccine as two major pharmaceutical companies report good results with their treatments for the disease.

According to Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike, a vaccine engineered by Pfizer, which has seen a 90% efficacy rate in clinical trials, could be submitted for review by the Food and Drug Administration within the next two weeks.

Another vaccine, engineered by Moderna, has a 94% efficacy rate in clinical trials according to the company, and could follow suit in seeking FDA approval in early December.

If that approval process, which could take several weeks, ends up with the vaccines being approved for emergency use, Ezike says that state residents could begin getting the treatment by the end of 2020.

If everything goes well, and the FDA looks at all those materials favorably, we could have the Pfizer vaccine by the end of December, and we could have the Moderna vaccine at the beginning of January, she said.

Under the states current vaccination plans, healthcare workers and residents of congregate care facilities like senior citizen living centers will be among the first to get the vaccine, with first responders and other state residents following as the state receives more doses of the treatment.

Dr. Allison Arwady, director of the Chicago Department of Public Health, says that the city will follow a similar path, with the city planning to receive approximately 150,000 doses in the first wave of vaccines after FDA approval.

Those initial doses will go to healthcare workers and to other employees in hospitals that have been on the front line of the fight against coronavirus, according to Arwady. After that, first responders and residents and employees of long-term care facilities would be next in line to receive the virus.

The city says it is working on plans to help expedite the process of getting the vaccine out, expanding the capacity of facilities that will store the vaccines at the low temperatures that the drug will require. Even so, officials warn that it will likely be the spring or summer of 2021 before the vaccine is available for widespread distribution.

Even if we are receiving doses by the end of the year, its going to be months before we have the amount of vaccine before we can start talking about vaccinating hundreds of thousands of Chicago residents, Arwady said.

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Arwady, Ezike Say First Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine Could Arrive in Illinois by End of Year - NBC Chicago

Health officials in Illinois are continuing to lay out their plans for distribution of a coronavirus vaccine as two major pharmaceutical companies report good results with their treatments for the disease.

According to Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike, a vaccine engineered by Pfizer, which has seen a 90% efficacy rate in clinical trials, could be submitted for review by the Food and Drug Administration within the next two weeks.

Another vaccine, engineered by Moderna, has a 94% efficacy rate in clinical trials according to the company, and could follow suit in seeking FDA approval in early December.

If that approval process, which could take several weeks, ends up with the vaccines being approved for emergency use, Ezike says that state residents could begin getting the treatment by the end of 2020.

If everything goes well, and the FDA looks at all those materials favorably, we could have the Pfizer vaccine by the end of December, and we could have the Moderna vaccine at the beginning of January, she said.

Under the states current vaccination plans, healthcare workers and residents of congregate care facilities like senior citizen living centers will be among the first to get the vaccine, with first responders and other state residents following as the state receives more doses of the treatment.

Dr. Allison Arwady, director of the Chicago Department of Public Health, says that the city will follow a similar path, with the city planning to receive approximately 150,000 doses in the first wave of vaccines after FDA approval.

Those initial doses will go to healthcare workers and to other employees in hospitals that have been on the front line of the fight against coronavirus, according to Arwady. After that, first responders and residents and employees of long-term care facilities would be next in line to receive the virus.

The city says it is working on plans to help expedite the process of getting the vaccine out, expanding the capacity of facilities that will store the vaccines at the low temperatures that the drug will require. Even so, officials warn that it will likely be the spring or summer of 2021 before the vaccine is available for widespread distribution.

Even if we are receiving doses by the end of the year, its going to be months before we have the amount of vaccine before we can start talking about vaccinating hundreds of thousands of Chicago residents, Arwady said.

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Arwady, Ezike Say First Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine Could Arrive in Illinois by End of Year - NBC Chicago

Cambridge-based Moderna said its coronavirus vaccine is more than 94% effective in preventing COVID-19, according to preliminary phase three trial data, something CEO Stephane Bancel called a game changer. But once a vaccine is approved, how will it be distributed in Massachusetts, and will people get it?

As pharmaceutical companies across the world race against the clock to find ways to prevent the virus, which in the Bay State alone has spread to more than 184,500 people, killing more than 10,100, according to the state's Department of Public Health, finding an effective vaccine for COVID-19 may end up being the easy part. Getting the vaccinations distributed could prove to be more of a challenge.

Im going to get it as soon as I can cause I want to get out and live my life, one woman in Newton Center said of a coronavirus vaccine.

While COVID-19 vaccines look to be highly effective, not everyone is convinced.

Im not sure yet. But if my doctor approves it, than Id be willing to take it, one woman in Nubian Square said.

With help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Massachusetts has been working on distribution plans since August. Vaccines will be administered in three phases, using existing healthcare providers and pharmacies at about 4,000 locations across the commonwealth.

Moderna said preliminary phase three trial data shows its coronavirus vaccine is more than 94% effective in preventing COVID-19.

Its going to be tough at the beginning but by the end of the spring if not well before then, in the end of the first quarter, this should be running smoothly, said Barry Bloom, former dean of Harvards T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The first phase will make shots available to the most vulnerable populations as well as health care and other essential workers.

The state already vaccinates about 3 million people every year, so there are systems in place to help with the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

Not everyone believes in vaccines, and experts say so-called vaccination hesitancy could make getting the virus under control more difficult.

I dont trust it, said another woman. I dont even like the flu shot. But I just dont trust it. Its as simple as that.

I have a lot more confidence that we know how to fix a logistical supply chain problem than we do to change peoples attitudes for the safety and efficacy of vaccines, Bloom said.

Another logistical hurdle the state still needs to overcome: how to store one of the vaccines at extremely cold temperatures before its used.

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How Will COVID-19 Vaccine Be Distributed in Mass. Once Approved? Will People Get It? - NBC10 Boston

Many are worried about side-effects, and that clinical trials have been conducted too quickly

Nov 17th 2020

AFTER MONTHS of dark headlines about the coronavirus pandemic, at last there is hope on the horizon. Last week Pfizer and BioNTech, two pharmaceutical firms, unveiled early data showing that their experimental vaccine is 90% effective in preventing covid-19. On November 16th Moderna, another pharma company, reported that its jab is nearly 95% effective. Financial markets cheered: on both days the S&P 500, Americas main stockmarket index, set record highs. More vaccines are probably on the way.

But there are still hurdles to overcome. Both vaccines must undergo further testing. Vaccines have to be manufactured in huge quantities and distributed effectively. And people must be willing to have the jabs. This may prove surprisingly problematic. According to a recent poll by Ipsos-MORI, less than three-quarters of adults say they are keen to get vaccinated for covid-19. The poll, which was conducted between October 8th and October 13th, asked 18,000 adults in 15 countries whether they would get a vaccine. Just 73% said they would, down from 77% in August. Only in three countriesMexico, Germany, and South Africawere people more eager to get vaccinated in October than they had been two months earlier. France remained the most reluctant country overall (see chart).

Why the hesitation? The most commonly cited reason was worry about side effects (34%), followed by concerns that clinical trials had moved too quickly (33%). Around one in ten respondents said they are against vaccines altogether. But such anti-vax sentiment is not common. Respondents were more likely to say they would get the vaccine, but not right away. Indeed just 52% said they would accept one within the first three months of its availability; 12% said they would wait at least a year to get inoculated. Some demographic groups are especially suspicious: those with less education in Australia; those on lower incomes in France; and the unemployed and African-Americans in the United States.

Such scepticism could prolong the pandemic, and it is worrying that it appeared to be mounting in the autumnperhaps because of suspicions that vaccines were being rushed through. Public-health authorities will hope that this weeks news might reverse that trend. Most models suggest that, even if the vaccines under development prove highly effective at preventing covid-19, at least two-thirds of the population will have to be vaccinated to quash future outbreaks. Failure to address the publics fears soon could disrupt even the best-laid plans.

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Daily chart - The world will soon have covid-19 vaccines. Will people have the jabs? | Graphic detail - The Economist

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) As the race for a COVD-19 vaccine continues, local hospitals are preparing their facilites for distribution. VCU Health told 8News the medical center is taking steps to secure and distribute vital doses to Virginia residents.

Although no vaccine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, clinical trials are showing high success rates prompting hospitals to get ready.

COVID-19 cases are soaring nation-wide and Virginia is no exception; the state is currently experiencing an increase in positive cases.

We here at VCU have probably seen maybe a 10 to 20 percent increase over the last month or so, said Dr. David Lanning, VCU Healths Interim Chief Medical Officer.

Dr. Lanning said VCU has no shortage of hospital beds at this time and shares that the majority of new cases are coming from younger folks. He said people aged 20-29 are having the highest infection rates and thats dangerous because many are asymptomatic and likely to spread the virus to older people who may be at risk.

Dr. Lanning also shares that ER visits at VCU Health have recently increased, but hospitalizations have not.

As Interim Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Lanning has kept a close eye on the numbers and is tasked with planning VCU Healths COVID-19 response plan, which now includes vaccine distribution.

We are positioning ourselves to be able to receive the vaccine and be able to store it properly and correctly, Dr. Lanning said.

He goes on to say that about a week ago, VCU Health submitted an application to receive doses of a potentially life-saving injection, if and when one becomes available.

As of Wednesday evening, clinical trials are still happening, but pharmaceutical company, Pfzier, is claiming to have reached a 95% success rate and biotechnology company, Moderna, is not far behind. However, a possible challenge for hospitals is storage. Vaccines must be kept in a freezer that reaches 94 degrees below zero, which not all facilities are equipped with.

Its a really deep freezer, so we are making sure we have that capacity, Dr. Lanning said. We have a number of freezers already, but I think we will be obtaining another one just to make sure we have the capacity.

Dr. Lanning said aside from securing storage for the vaccine, VCU Health is currently creating a special coronavirus task force to ensure distribution is fair.

We are putting together a group of folks that have broad representation from in-house as well as outside, he said. We are going to connect with some of our community folks to make sure we are thoughtful and fair.

Fair in a sense of who will get the vaccine first, as doses will be limited until supply meets the global demand. Dr. Lanning said it will likely be healthcare workers and vulnerable patients who get the first doses, however the VCU Health task force will be establishing guidelines while leaning on recommendations from the CDC.

Dr. Lanning said he is encouraged by the current clinical trials and VCU Health will be ready to distribute vaccines when the time comes. He also wants people to know that even if the medical facility does get thousands of doses, it will take time to see the response many are hoping for, which is numbers going down and hopefully the virus eradicated.

Pfzier is expected to apply for emergency authorization within the coming days and if approved the medical company says it could produce 50 million doses by the end of this year.

However, while Virginians wait for a vaccine Dr. Lanning is warning people to be vigilant over the holidays. He said part of the spike in cases is that people are tired of the virus and simply letting their guards down.

As a friendly reminder, Dr. Lanning and most health professionals are telling folks to keep social distancing, wearing their masks, washing their hands, and consider small or virtual holiday gatherings this year.

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VCU Health submits application for COVID-19 vaccine and creates special task force - 8News

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) As the race for a COVD-19 vaccine continues, local hospitals are preparing their facilites for distribution. VCU Health told 8News the medical center is taking steps to secure and distribute vital doses to Virginia residents.

Although no vaccine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, clinical trials are showing high success rates prompting hospitals to get ready.

COVID-19 cases are soaring nation-wide and Virginia is no exception; the state is currently experiencing an increase in positive cases.

We here at VCU have probably seen maybe a 10 to 20 percent increase over the last month or so, said Dr. David Lanning, VCU Healths Interim Chief Medical Officer.

Dr. Lanning said VCU has no shortage of hospital beds at this time and shares that the majority of new cases are coming from younger folks. He said people aged 20-29 are having the highest infection rates and thats dangerous because many are asymptomatic and likely to spread the virus to older people who may be at risk.

Dr. Lanning also shares that ER visits at VCU Health have recently increased, but hospitalizations have not.

As Interim Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Lanning has kept a close eye on the numbers and is tasked with planning VCU Healths COVID-19 response plan, which now includes vaccine distribution.

We are positioning ourselves to be able to receive the vaccine and be able to store it properly and correctly, Dr. Lanning said.

He goes on to say that about a week ago, VCU Health submitted an application to receive doses of a potentially life-saving injection, if and when one becomes available.

As of Wednesday evening, clinical trials are still happening, but pharmaceutical company, Pfzier, is claiming to have reached a 95% success rate and biotechnology company, Moderna, is not far behind. However, a possible challenge for hospitals is storage. Vaccines must be kept in a freezer that reaches 94 degrees below zero, which not all facilities are equipped with.

Its a really deep freezer, so we are making sure we have that capacity, Dr. Lanning said. We have a number of freezers already, but I think we will be obtaining another one just to make sure we have the capacity.

Dr. Lanning said aside from securing storage for the vaccine, VCU Health is currently creating a special coronavirus task force to ensure distribution is fair.

We are putting together a group of folks that have broad representation from in-house as well as outside, he said. We are going to connect with some of our community folks to make sure we are thoughtful and fair.

Fair in a sense of who will get the vaccine first, as doses will be limited until supply meets the global demand. Dr. Lanning said it will likely be healthcare workers and vulnerable patients who get the first doses, however the VCU Health task force will be establishing guidelines while leaning on recommendations from the CDC.

Dr. Lanning said he is encouraged by the current clinical trials and VCU Health will be ready to distribute vaccines when the time comes. He also wants people to know that even if the medical facility does get thousands of doses, it will take time to see the response many are hoping for, which is numbers going down and hopefully the virus eradicated.

Pfzier is expected to apply for emergency authorization within the coming days and if approved the medical company says it could produce 50 million doses by the end of this year.

However, while Virginians wait for a vaccine Dr. Lanning is warning people to be vigilant over the holidays. He said part of the spike in cases is that people are tired of the virus and simply letting their guards down.

As a friendly reminder, Dr. Lanning and most health professionals are telling folks to keep social distancing, wearing their masks, washing their hands, and consider small or virtual holiday gatherings this year.

Read this article:

VCU Health submits application for COVID-19 vaccine and creates special task force - 8News

The majority of American sports fans are waiting for the arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine before they feel comfortable returning to the bleachers, according to a new study conducted this past weekend.

Two-thirds of the survey respondents said they would not attend an indoor sporting event without a vaccine -- even if masks and social distancing measures were being enforced in the arena. Among respondents who identified themselves as sports fans, 60% said they were waiting for a vaccine.

For outdoor sporting events, 58% of all respondents said they also were waiting on a vaccine rather than trusting personal protective equipment or social distancing to keep them safe in a large crowd.

The survey, conducted by Seton Hall University's Sharkey Institute, collected answers from 1,506 adults from across the country. The responses were collected from Nov. 13 through Nov. 16 -- roughly one week after Pfizer announced that an early trial showed it had developed a COVID-19 vaccine that was more than 90% effective.

A similar poll conducted in April, weeks after the sports world came to a sudden halt, found that 72% of Americans were unwilling to attend any kind of sporting event (indoor or outdoor) without the availability of a vaccine.

Multiple sports have since returned to play while allowing a limited number of fans to attend games. Leagues that play exclusively inside -- the NBA and the NHL -- did not allow fans at the vast majority of their games this summer. Some outdoor sports such as college football have hosted games with thousands of fans in attendance.

While the number of sports fans who are willing to attend games without a vaccine has increased in the past seven months, the results are still "awful numbers to ponder" for those that depend on ticket sales for income, according to Charles Grantham, who runs the Seton Hall sports management center that conducted the poll.

Grantham and poll methodologist Daniel Ladik said the recent news of a promising vaccine on the horizon was very likely reflected in the responses they received.

"The recent news of vaccine breakthroughs has got to be enormously uplifting to those in the business of selling tickets, be it sports or entertainment," Grantham said in a release Wednesday.

The poll results also showed that parents with children under the age of 18 said they were more likely to attend events than the general population. Of parents polled, 51% said they would attend events with social distancing and mask-wearing before a vaccine was available.

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Survey -- Fans still say no to attending games without a COVID-19 vaccine - ESPN

Experts are hopeful that a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus will become available sooner rather than later.

We've been waiting on one or more COVID-19 vaccines for months, unsure of not only when they would arrive but how effective they would be when they did. Now it appears the two vaccines that will most likely be the first to receive Food and Drug Administration authorization might get here before 2021. Not only that, but clinical trials have demonstrated both are over 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 infections. That means at least nine out of 10 people who receive those vaccines will likely not contract COVID-19, even if they're exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, after being inoculated.

Last week, US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced it has a vaccine that demonstrated 90% efficacyin tests conducted on 43,538 people in six countries, with no serious safety concerns. Moderna, a US biotech firm, announced this week that its vaccine has been demonstrated to bealmost 95% effective and also relatively safe in a trial that included over 30,000 people. Each vaccine requires an initial dose plus a subsequent "booster" dose several weeks later.

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Both companies plan to apply for emergency authorization from the FDA this month. Pfizer, if authorized, expects to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020, and 1.3 billion in 2021. Moderna plans to ship 20 million doses in 2020 and another 500 million to 1 billion in 2021, if authorized. With over 330 million people in the US alone,not everyone will be able to get a vaccine at once -- the first doses to reach market will likely go to heath care personnel, followed by essential workers, people with underlying medical conditions and older adults.

Pfizer and Moderna represent only the tip of the iceberg. Currently, there are67 coronavirus vaccinesin various stages of clinical trials, with a handful almost ready to apply for authorization. Most experts believe we'll have several moreready to distribute by early 2021, but it may not be until 2022 that life starts to get back to normal.

Here, we walk you through the leading coronavirus vaccine news and explain where the most promising candidates stand. This article is updated frequently and is intended to be a general overview and not a source of medical advice. If you're seeking more information about coronavirus testing, here's how to find a testing site near you.

An effective coronavirus vaccine might be the only way to bring a stop to preventative measures, like social distancing and face masks.

Several acceleration efforts are currently underway, like theWhite House's Operation Warp Speed, which is meant to cut through regulatory red tape to speed up vaccine development and be ready to distribute vaccines as soon as they receive FDA authorization. So far, the US government haspledged over $10 billionto several vaccine manufacturers to secure a total of 800 million vaccine doses.

Experts say recent surges in coronavirus cases aren't merely the result of the US doing more testing, as a higher percentage of those tested are coming up positive compared to earlier stages of the pandemic.

Vaccines typically take about10 to 15 years to developand approve, through four phases that includehuman trials. But with Operation Warp Speed, approved vaccine projects can submit data to the FDA bit by bit, rather than submitting all the data from a four-phase trial all at once.

Meanwhile, the program is also financially backing efforts to start manufacturing doses while clinical trials are still ongoing. That means if and when those vaccines do get authorized, there will already be a store of doses ready to distribute nationally.

Here's a quick look at some of the frontrunners besides Pfizer and Moderna in the race to find a vaccine for COVID-19, including where the vaccines are being developed, where they are on testing them, and when scientists think they might be ready for widespread distribution, if known.

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Oxford University/AstraZeneca (UK):AstraZeneca began testing on100,000 human volunteers in at least three countries. Lead researcher Dr. Sarah Gilbert had initially said AstraZeneca is aiming for a fall 2020 releaseand, while that may be optimistic at this point after the trial was briefly paused to investigate a participant's illness, it doesn't appear to be significantly delayed.

Sinovac (China): Currently testing its vaccine on about 10,000 human volunteers in China and about 9,000 in Brazil and is set to begin testing on about 1,900 test subjects in Indonesia soon. Honesti Basyir, the president of Bio Farma, Sinovac's Indonesian partner, has said he expects the vaccine to be ready by early 2021.

Sinopharm (China): Currently testing about 15,000 volunteers in the Middle Eastin a trial the state-owned company expects to last three to six months. Early results suggest the drug is safe and at least somewhat effective. Sinopharm recently built a second facility to manufacture the vaccine, doubling its capacity to about 200 million doses per year.

CanSino Biologics (China): Set to begin large-scale human trials this summer, CanSino's vaccine has already been approved for the Chinese military. The vaccine is based on a modified common cold virus, which some experts warn could make it less effective than other vaccine efforts.

Wearing a face mask remains the surest way of preventing transmission of the coronavirus.

We probably won't know until next year, but Fauci has suggested we might requireseveral different vaccinesmade and distributed by different labs to bring an end to the pandemic, in apaper published May 11 in the journal Science. He also has said he foresees different vaccines being given to different patient populations. For example, one vaccine for elderly or other high-risk patients, another for healthy adults and another for children.

Getting one or more vaccines through clinical trials to FDA approval is just the first leg of the journey. The next is convincing people to take it. Sixty-three percent of US adults expressed safety concerns over a coronavirus vaccine, according to aHarris Pollfrom Oct. 19, with 40% of respondents specifically worrying that development has beentoofast. Some people are reportedlyconcerned about possible side effects.

Life in the US will begin to return to normal once we reach what scientists call "herd immunity," which, with regard to the coronavirus, means at least 60% to 70% of the population is immune. So long as enough people take the vaccine to reach that level, it won't matter if a few people object or decline to take the vaccine for other reasons, for example, if they aren't healthy enough to be vaccinated.

Most experts expect a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, by 2021.

Coronaviruses are a large class of viruses andso far there are no vaccinesfor any of them. While there are promising early results, there's no guarantee a vaccine will be ready by 2021. Statistically, only about 6% of vaccine candidates ever make it through to market,according to a Reuters reportfrom April. However, health officials are very optimistic that the Pfizer vaccine and others like it could end the coronavirus pandemic.

Whether or not COVID-19 vaccines are effective at stopping the spread of coronavirus will depend a lot on how our bodies build immunity to the disease. Here's what we know so far about whether or not you can get COVID-19 more than once. Testing is also key to slowing coronavirus' spread -- learn about a device that can produce results in under 90 minutes here. Finally, read about how all of these issues and more weigh in on US President-elect Joseph Biden's plan to fight COVID-19.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

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Will a COVID-19 vaccine be ready in 2020? It looks like Pfizer and Moderna might make it happen - CNET