Coronavirus Vaccine by September 2020

Coronavirus vaccine by September 2020 can be develop said by many scientists, but is it possible? This is the first time in the history of the Modern world; such a desperate search is being made for a vaccine. Until today, 100+ vaccines are being explored.

Despite many Govts., Scientists and pharmaceutical companies are involved in the search for a vaccine, it is estimated that it would take 12-18 months to develop such a vaccine.

But why does the development of a vaccine take so much time? And what is India's position in this vaccine research project?

The Vaccine Process

Usually, it takes 10-15 years to develop a vaccine provided, only if the project is going in the right direction.
Scientists are trying to find out a cure for HIV, for the past 40 years and still, a vaccine for HIV can only be expected by 2030, which is only after 50 years from the development of the [HIV viral] infection.

Fastest ever vaccine was developed in 5 years. To understand why so much time is needed to develop a vaccine, we need to understand every step involved in a vaccine development program.

Until today, there are 113 vaccine candidates. This does not mean that we will get 113 vaccines, because many of these vaccine candidates would not be successful.

To understand this, consider the vaccine development program to be a competition, where 113 candidates are participating, but they'll have to face several tests.

The first stage in Vaccine development is Research, where scientists also need to secure approvals and funding.

Usually, this phase takes almost 2 years. But the present situation is not usual.
Scientists in China published the genetic sequence of COVID-19 on Jan 12, 2020, just within a week after isolating [the virus] from a patient.

Till late January [end], many had used the data from the genetic sequence and started working on it.

Scientists also found assistance from previous researches, which was done during SARS (2003) & MERS (2012) outbreaks. The virus responsible for SARS is 80% identical (similar) to the COVID-19 virus.


Due to this fact, many vaccine candidates crossed their research stage just within a few months instead of 2 years.

The Trail Stages

There are 3 phases in this stage, which take nearly 4 years to be completed.

Cases of COVID-19, they'll have to complete within just a few months.

In the first phase, scientists check the effectiveness of the vaccine through animal tests and then through small scale human trials.

Then the second phase, scientists proceed with testing the vaccine on many humans and try to examine [check] if their bodies create an immune response [to the virus].

When coming to the last phase [of research stage], Scientists test for immunity in large communities where almost thousands of people are involved.

Coronavirus Vaccine News

In the case of COVID-19, almost 20,000 - 30,000 people would be involved in their research trials where scientists would divide these people into 2 groups.

Moderna, an American company had recently announced that their Phase - 1 trials have been successful where they had researched [the vaccine] on 8 human subjects.

There are now heading to Phase - 2 trials.

The best-case scenario is that by Sept, 2020 we might have a vaccine for COVID-19.  But some people have also expressed that we might not get a vaccine even by 2021 or 2022 unless we are lucky.

After crossing these 2 stages, we would get a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19.  Then we will have to manufacture it and also at such a level [scale], never done in history before which makes it very challenging.

When companies build a vaccine production factory [plant], every equipment is specialized. Due to this reason, we will not be able to use any other vaccine [production plant] factory to manufacture [the vaccine] for COVID-19. Such factories could take nearly 5 years to be built. 

Step taken by few foundation

Many people like Bill Gates are trying to reduce this time [duration]. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have announced that they have already started building factories for [the production of] 7 different vaccines.

This means that if any 1 of those 7 vaccines is successful in all Research and Trial stages, there would at least be a factory to immediately manufacture that vaccine.

Even if these factories start [production of the vaccine] we will have to produce vaccine [dosages] in such numbers [scale], never done in history before. This is not very easy.

We might think, we are capable of manufacturing crores of chocolates, TVs, cameras. Then what is the difficulty in manufacturing vaccines?

This is because [production of] vaccines need highly specialized equipment whose demand will be very high when we start producing vaccines.

Vaccines are stored in vials. These vials are not made of ordinary glass but a specialized glass so that they are not damaged in different environments and during transportation across the world.

Currently, we don't even have enough vials to produce crores [dosage] of this vaccine. After manufacturing, we'll have to distribute these vaccines.

We'll not just need trucks (for transportation) but also syringes, cotton &band-aid. But before that, our Government will have to think about another complicated question.

Suppose our Central Govt. gets 10 lakh dosages of the vaccine, which 10 lakhs [of the Indian population] will get this vaccine?

Speed vs. Safety

According to a professor from Yale University, "If we try to develop a vaccine through normal methods, we will not be able to do it within 18 months."So many companies are pushing the boundaries of innovation. Like Vaxart is trying to develop an orally administered vaccine.

Another German company [CureVac]is trying to produce a low dosage vaccine which could be manufactured easily.

But to meet our objectives, we will have to compromise either between safety or speed. In both ways, the victims [sufferers]will only be human lives.

Traditional vaccines include a weakened virus. In the 1950s, a Polio vaccine was developed which was approved in just a few hours. But the virus in the vaccine was not very weak.

The patients who were administered the vaccine contracted Polio due to the vaccine and unfortunately led to the death of 11 children.

In 2015, a French drug company – Sanofihad introduced a vaccine for dengue. Many experts felt that it was not tested properly.

In the Philippines, this vaccine led to the worsening of dengue conditions among children.

Globalization vs. Nationalism

Due to the urgency of this vaccine, many companies are cooperating in ways unprecedented.

Like, many companies are sharing data about failed vaccine candidates so the others don't repeat the same research.

We are noticing such [tremendous] coordination between companies but not between governments.

Coronavirus Vaccine USA

The USA and China are in a race to develop this vaccine, as it has become their prestige issue.

We had seen the same trend during the Cold War when the USA and the Soviet Union (USSR) were involved in a space race to find out which country could send an astronaut to the moon first. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced that if China develops the vaccine; it would make it available to the entire world.

This could be a method to recover China's international reputation.

Would this really happen?

I guess only time will tell.

But in the case of COVID-19, when the scale of the disease is so huge, what would happen?

Suppose the USA funds a French drug company, to develop a vaccine which is being manufactured in India.

Which country would get access to the vaccine first?

Our government(s) will have to think about such questions.
Fortunately, in the case of vaccines, India is in a very good position. 60 - 70% of the world's vaccines are manufactured in India.

Serum Institute, which is an Indian company, is the world's largest vaccine manufacturer.

They have signed agreements with 4 vaccine developers to manufacture vaccines and Serum Institute's CEO has announced that Indians would get the vaccine first.

From the history of HIV, anti-viral drugs could reduce death rates and transmission rates to a large extent.
But, most importantly our world needs a vaccine to return to normalcy [normal times].

Besides, we also don't know if the COVID-19 vaccine would give us lifetime immunity like smallpox vaccine or just for 1-2 years like the vaccines for[family of] other coronaviruses.

In order to face this disease, we need 2 things, Luck and Cooperation. The former (Luck) is beyond our control. But we could control the latter (Cooperation).

At the end, I would like to say that, let us help each other and wait for the vaccine, till then let's follow all the precautions and maintain social distance.


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