How Long Will It Be Until We Have a Coronavirus Vaccine? Heres What Experts Think – Prevention.com

Were all dealing with a new normal right now, and according to the White Houses infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the novel coronavirus pandemic will continue to impact our lives on some level for the foreseeable future.

If you want to get to pre-coronavirus, that might never happen in the sense of the fact that the threat is there, Dr. Fauci said in a press conference on Monday, per CNBC. But... I feel confident that over a period of time, we will get a good vaccine, we will never have to get back to where we are right now.

Even then, though, Dr. Fauci said its unlikely that life will ever be 100% the same. When we say getting back to normal, we mean something very different from what were going through right now, because right now we are in a very intense mitigation, Dr. Fauci said. If back to normal means acting like there never was a coronavirus problem, I dont think thats going to happen until we do have a situation where you can completely protect the population [with a vaccine].

Without a vaccine, the risk of contracting COVID-19 will still be there, says infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. A vaccine is the only way we can control this virus for the long term, he says. It is not going to disappear until we get a vaccine.

A vaccine is the only way we can control this virus for the long term.

A vaccine is especially important for people who will have a harder time fighting off the virus, says Richard Watkins, M.D., infectious disease physician and professor of internal medicine at the Northeast Ohio Medical University. It is needed to prevent illness in everyone, but especially for those with a high risk of complications, such as the elderly or people with a compromised immune system, he says.

Its also unclear at this time how long someone is protected against the novel coronavirus after they get sick and recover. Once you get measles, youre protected for life, but thats not true of all infections, says William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. You can get whooping cough more than once, and, if you get a cold caused by a coronavirus, you are protected against that strain for about a year. Then, the protection starts to wane.

If COVID-19 behaves like the common cold, even people who have already experienced the virus will be need to be vaccinated in the future, Dr. Schaffner says.

Vaccines can only go to market after theyre approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the process generally takes one to two years, sometimes longer, Dr. Watkins says.

First, a company or organization has to create a vaccine that they think is viable. In this case, a COVID-19 vaccine would be developed in cells in a lab, Dr. Schaffner says. If lab tests show that a vaccine has potential, it can move on to animal studies, the FDA says. If the vaccine appears to be safe in animals and studies suggest it will be safe for humans, it can be tested in clinical trials with people.

Clinical trials typically have three phases, with each phase using more people, the FDA explains. In the final phase, vaccinated people are compared with people who have received a placebo or another vaccine so researchers can learn more about the test vaccines safety and effectiveness, and to help identify common side effects. The trials also must prove that a vaccines benefits outweigh any potential risks.

Once all of that has been completed, vaccines are licensed and monitored closely as people begin using them.

Its not entirely clear. Dr. Fauci has said he expects that a vaccine will be ready anywhere from 12 to 18 months from now. That is a very, very rapid timeline, Dr. Schaffner says. But, he adds, the government has the ability to speed things up in situations like this.

Plus, several organizations are already making progress. Pharmaceutical company Inovio announced earlier this week that it has initiated phase one of the clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine, and said that the company is hoping to have something that can be used by the public in 12 to 18 months. The National Institutes of Health has also collaborated with Moderna Inc., and administered the first shot in a vaccine trial earlier this month.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are also working on a vaccine right now, the school announced, and University of Pittsburgh scientists say their vaccinea microneedle patch that goes on like a Band-Aidhas been successful in creating antibodies against the novel coronavirus within two weeks of application. Its actually pretty painlessit feels kind of like Velcro, said Louis Falo, M.D., Ph.D., one of the vaccines researchers.

Not necessarily. If we flatten the curve and this first surge begins to diminish, and if there is a contributing seasonal component to this vaccine, Im sure the national government and state governors will want to loosen up our stay-at-home orders, Dr. Schaffner says. Obviously, the country has to start getting back to work. It will be a judgment call that will happen in the next few months.

However, Dr. Watkins adds, the virus makes the timeline.

As of now, plenty of groups are racing to try to be the first to get FDA licensing for their vaccine. Scientists are all using slightly different methods, Dr. Schaffner says. Were not putting all of our vaccine eggs in one basket.

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How Long Will It Be Until We Have a Coronavirus Vaccine? Heres What Experts Think - Prevention.com