Vaccine trials normally have a 90 per cent failure rate and can take a decade or more to develop. Seventeen years after SARS emerged in 2003, there is still no vaccine against it.
But there is real hope that COVID-19 is different. And with thousands of brilliant scientists working hard on developing vaccines and treatments to fight the novel coronavirus that has turned our lives upside-down, it’s quite possible that we could see a vaccine that works by early next year.
A Halifax lab has joined the fight.
A promising vaccine trial is being held by the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology in Halifax. Developed by CanSino Biologics of China, the vaccine has already undergone trials in China, with encouraging results. Trials there are into a second phase with hundreds of volunteers, but the Canadian trial will be an initial phase with a small number of subjects.
Agreements with the Canadian government will permit the vaccine to go into production and distribution rapidly if it proves effective. It will be the first Canadian trial for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Then there’s the Moderna vaccine, which made noise earlier this month in the U.S.
Moderna’s vaccine technology is new, using genetic material from the virus called mRNA, and has never produced an approved vaccine. Nevertheless, the company hopes to conduct a trial with thousands of healthy participants in late summer and have a vaccine ready for production by the end of 2020.
That’s only two of almost 100 trials being worked on all over the world in an unprecedented scientific race to beat the virus. Multiple vaccines will be needed in order to satisfy the demand. Billions of doses will eventually be required for a worldwide inoculation program, and that doesn’t get manufactured and distributed overnight.
There’s enormous pressure to act fast, with 5.5 million confirmed cases and almost 350,000 deaths worldwide caused by the virus, which is still in its first wave in many places. The economic blow has been severe, shutting down millions of businesses and leading to a recession that is likely worse than the financial crisis of 2008-09.
One reason scientists are so hopeful is that the virus does not appear to mutate to the extent that researchers feared. A New York Times story last week reported that it has proven to be “clumsy prey” that is easy to attack because its rate of mutation is slow.
And early work appears to indicate that the vaccines under study are safe, which is one of the reasons the trials are moving so quickly.
All of which is welcome good news to a world weary of illness, death and economic hardship.
