Washington,
USA
A vaccine for the novel coronavirus infection could be ready by the end of this year, according to Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The top US
epidemiologist said in an interview on Wednesday that if all things fall in the
right place, we might have a vaccine for Covid-19 by November and December.
According to the World
Health Organization (WHO), more than 100 vaccines are being developed across
the world, with a handful of candidates already in human trials.
Till date, China’s
CanSino adenovirus vaccine, Oxford University’s adenovirus vaccine, Moderna’s
mRNA vaccine emerged as the top most promising vaccine candidates for COVID-19.
“I still think that we
have a good chance, if all the things fall in the right place, that we might
have a vaccine that would be deployable by the end of the year, by December and
November,” Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, told CNN.
Meanwhile, a leading US
epidemiologist, Robert Schooley, a professor of medicine with the Division of
Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California,
San Diego, told Xinhua in a recent interview that the results of China’s
COVID-19 vaccine trial are ‘very impressive’.
According to a study
published by the medical journal The Lancet, the phase 1
trial of an Ad5 vectored COVID-19 vaccine in Wuhan, China, has been found to be
safe, well-tolerated, and able to generate an immune response against
SARS-COV-2 that causes COVID-19 in humans.
Fauci said although
there are a lot of variables when it comes to dealing with vaccines,
development continues to proceed. He said a second wave of coronavirus outbreak
‘could happen’, but the country (US) can prevent it if they open ‘correctly’.
“It could happen, but it is not inevitable,” Fauci said.
The US top infectious
disease physician also said he’s not sure whether hydroxychloroquine should be
banned as a treatment for coronavirus.
However, he said that
the scientific data quite evident now about the lack of efficacy for the
anti-malarial drug touted as a ‘game-changer’ by President Donal Trump. Testing
of hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for COVID-19 has been halted by
the WHO citing safety concerns.
Currently, there’s no specific antiviral agent or vaccine for COVID-19, which has claimed at least 352,494 lives worldwide and infected about 5,638,190 people in 196 countries and territories.
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