A major American pharmaceutical corporation has announced it could have a coronavirus vaccine ready by the fall.
Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said Tuesday a coronavirus vaccine for emergency use could be ready by the autumn and for broader roll out by the end of 2020. Pfizer said human testing will not get underway until August.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, CEO Bourla stated: ‘This is a crisis right now, and a solution is desperately needed by all.’
Pfizer joins the global race to find a coronavirus vaccine, with several other firms saying they too have accelerated their testing timetable.
As many as 100 potential COVID-19 candidate vaccines are now under development by biotech and research teams around the world, and at least five of these are in preliminary testing in people in what are known as Phase 1 clinical trials.
Pfizer’s announcement comes as 14 US states start to partially lift or ease lockdown and stay-at-home orders, gradually allowing a resumption of economic activity.
Scientists at Oxford University in the UK say they are one step closer in developing a vaccine to stop the spread.
Last month, promising results were seen after six rhesus macaque monkeys were injected with a single dose of the university’s new vaccine.
This means that a new vaccine trial involving more than 6,000 participants will be started by the end of next month in an effort to show the vaccine is safe and effective.
With emergency approval, ‘a few million’ doses could be available as early as September, if the inoculation works,
Italy’s ReiThera, Germany’s Leukocare and Belgium’s Univercells said they were working together on another potential shot and aimed to start trials in a few months.
ReiThera’s chief technology officer Stefano Colloca told Reuters his three-way consortium’s potential vaccine technology would allow for production to be rapidly scaled up from tens of thousands to millions of doses, and would also have a long shelf-life to ease distribution.
‘We’ll begin the trials in July. We have to add to the challenge of developing a safe vaccine for COVID-19 the important need to guarantee the production of millions of doses in record time’, he told Reuters.
Charlie Weller, head of vaccines at the Wellcome Trust global health charity, said on Wednesday that to develop safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines to protect everyone as soon as possible, ‘the world needs to be prepared to execute the largest and fastest scale-up in vaccine manufacturing history’.
A Swiss scientist said on Thursday he aimed to get ahead of industry projections that a COVID-19 vaccine will take 18 months, with a hope to put his laboratory’s version in use in Switzerland this year.
Elisa Granato (pictured) was the first volunteer to be injected in human trials of a coronavirus vaccine at Oxford University
Pictured: An Oxford University Jenner Institute scientist using a multi-channel pipette
And as more than a dozen US states prepare to gradually ease lockdown measures in order to revive their stagnated economies, many in the US consider a vaccine a sure fire route to some sense of normality.
However, public health experts have warned other means are necessary.
They suggest ramping up testing into the millions, 100,000 extra healthcare staff to contract trace and isolate people exposed to the virus, and open data exchange is the way to go.
To assist US states in partially lifting or easing lockdown and stay-at-home orders, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has drafted a list of protocols for largely small and medium-size businesses such a restaurants, salons and tattoo parlors to follow.
Depending on the business they include the closure of break rooms, limited numbers of people seated inside restaurants and tables six feet apart, screens affixed to the registers, disposable menus and plates, and floor markings.
Some schoolchildren will be required to eat lunch inside their classrooms.