COVID-19 vaccine could be ready by end of this year

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.