Coronavirus vaccine: When will we get it? Everything we know so far – CNET

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

Will there be a coronavirus vaccine? Will US company Moderna lead the way? Experts are hopeful that we'll see a coronavirus vaccine sooner rather than later, but there's no cure yet for the virus that causes COVID-19 and vaccines often take years to develop, approve, make anddistribute globally. There is heightened activity, however, and a strong desire in the medical community to fast-track the process.

In fact, as states and countries slowlyemerge from lockdown measuresmeant tocurb the spreadof the coronavirus,doctors and scientists around the globeare racing to develop vaccines tobring an end to the pandemic, which has already claimedover 320,000 lives worldwide. Even though hardly four months have passed since acluster of unusual pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Chinafirst alerted the world to a new disease now known as COVID-19,at least half a dozen vaccine development projectsarealready reporting encouraging progress, with many more in development.

Keep track of the coronavirus pandemic.

One more note before we get underway. This article is updated frequently as new information comes to light, and is intended to be a general overview, not a source of medical advice. If you're seeking more information about coronavirus testing,here's how to find a testing sitenear you. Here'show to know if you qualify for a testandwhy there aren't any coronavirus at-home test kitsyet.

Read more:What it will take for life to return to normal after lockdown ends

Now playing: Watch this: Prepare for a 'new national surveillance system' in order...

6:30

Moderna, a Massachusetts-based biotech company, is making headlines for its coronavirus vaccine development -- both positive and negative. On Monday, reports that Moderna's first trials showed promise for immunity caused Moderna's stock to soar. On Tuesday, scientists cast doubt on the company's data, causing the same stocks to falter.

Moderna is the beneficiary of the USFood and Drug Administration's program to fast-track a vaccine. Thefast-track processexpedites approval by allowing select labs to submit their review process by phases, rather than submitting all sections of the application at once, which is the usual way. The company ranPhase 1 clinical trialsand reportedpreliminary data that it says supports the moveto a larger Phase 2 trial. You can learn more about its vaccine candidate,mRNA-1273, here.

Another vaccine is under development atOxford Universityin the UK. Scientists there say their vaccinecould be ready by the fall of 2020. Oxford is working with pharmaceutical giantAstraZeneca, which beganPhase 1 human trials in April.

Scientists say in a paper thatresults from Oxford's trialson mice and rhesus monkeys aremixed, however, speculating that humans who eventually take the vaccinemight still be able to spreadthe virus. You can read more about this effort, calledChAdOx1 nCoV-19, at AstraZeneca's website.

We won't know for a long time, butDr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, suggests that it might takeseveral different vaccinesmade and distributed by different labs in order to effectively eradicate COVID-19 from the planet. Fauci co-authored apaper about vaccines published May 11 in the journal Science.

A vaccine is a medical treatment that protects you against a disease like the coronavirus or smallpox. For a deeper dive into how vaccines work, check outthis in-depth coronavirus treatment explainer by CNET's Science Editor Jackson Ryan. The short and sweet of it is that a vaccine tricks your body into thinking it's already had the disease, so your body's natural defense -- the immune system --builds antibodies against it. Then, if you were to become infected, your body would call upon the antibodies to fight the virus before you feel sick.

Vaccines typically take about10 to 15 years to develop. That's in part because any new medical treatment needs to be thoroughly tested for safety before it can be distributed to millions or billions of people. Themumps vaccine took four years, which is widely considered the fastest vaccine approval in the history of infectious disease.

Read more:Need a pulse oximeter? These models are in stock starting at $24

Now playing: Watch this: Vaccines, antibody tests, treatments: The science of...

6:02

Most health experts predict that the virus won't stop spreading until 60% to 70% of the world'spopulation is immune, and they say the only way to reach that level of immunity without amonumental death toll is through vaccines. Such is the opinion ofCarl T. Bergstrom, a biology professor at the University of Washington andNatalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, in a joint editorialpublished in the New York Times.

There are currentlyover 100 vaccines reportedly under development, withseven reportedly already in clinical trialsearlier this month. That means there aremore scientists working harder and faster on finding a vaccinethan ever before in the history of pandemics. But even if one or more of the vaccines now in the works turns out to be effective,the FDA approval processtypically takes a year or longer.

This April, the White House began organizing "Operation Warp Speed," according to Bloomberg, a sort of coronavirus vaccine task force that has identified14 vaccine projectsthat it will focus on fast-tracking. The "Warp Speed" project itself,which the White House acknowledged during an April press briefing, has a stated goal of readying300 million doses of vaccineto be available by January 2021. That's a bit faster than the12- to 18-month estimated timeline proposed by Fauci, the NIAID director.

As of this writing there areover 100 vaccines under development in countries around the world, including the US, UK, Germany, Japan and China. Twelve are either already in clinical trials or starting in the next few months.

Scientists from around the world are working toward developing a vaccine. So far 12 projects have either started or will soon start clinical trials.

Statistically, only about 6% of vaccine candidates ever make it through to market, according to a Reuters special report, and not just because they don't work. There's a whole litany of problems that could cancel even a promising candidate.

Take, for example, what happened when scientists tried to develop a vaccine for SARS --it backfired and actually made people more susceptible to the disease. The same thing happened with avaccine for Dengue fever. To make matters worse, coronaviruses are a large class of viruses andso far there are no vaccines for any of them.

However, this particular coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has some unique traits that may help researchers working on a vaccine. For example, some viruses, like the flu, mutate quickly and often, which is why there's a new flu vaccine every year. Early evidencesuggests that the coronavirus doesn't appear to do that. Althoughsome researchers have hypothesized that a more contagious strain has recently developed, others aren't so sure. Either way, it's thought that the virus has not yet mutated significantly enough to disrupt vaccine development, nor is it expected to, though it's too soon to say for certain, and there are still many unknowns about the virus' behavior.

Rules and regulations vary by country, but, generally speaking, most industrialized nations have similar protocols for approving a vaccine. The following path is how vaccines are approved in the US under the FDA:

Until there's a vaccine, expect safety precautions like face masks and social distancing to be a part of everyday life.

The longer we go without a vaccine, the more likely focus will shift toward treatments, such as theexperimental antiviral drug remdesivir, which has reportedly shown promising results. With effective therapeutic treatments, many viruses that used to be fatal are no longer death sentences. Patients with HIV, for example, now can expect to enjoythe same life expectancyas non-HIV-positive individuals, thanks to tremendous advances in treatment.

Without a coronavirus vaccine, the road back to normal may be harder and longer, but not necessarily impossible.Coronavirus testing, includingantibody testing, andcontact-tracingefforts would probably need to intensify.

Lockdown measures are alreadylifting slowly, althoughdepending on people's behavioral practicesand a potential resurgence of infections, cities and states may bring back certain quarantine measures, including requiringface masksandsocial distancing. Eventually, the global population may reach the 60% to 70% rate required forherd immunityto protect those who aren't immune.

Read more from the original source:

Coronavirus vaccine: When will we get it? Everything we know so far - CNET