Governments are spending huge amounts to maintain their countries’ economies during the COVID-19 lockdown periods and death rates remain high despite the world being almost 4 months into the pandemic. It has now become a race against time to develop a viable COVID-19 vaccine – and most importantly, one that is safe for human use.

How long does it take for a vaccine to be developed?

Historically, the development of a vaccine after any pandemic has taken a significant period of time. The vaccine for the H1N1 virus – the virus which caused the pandemic now named as the “Spanish flu” in 1918 and 1919 and claimed as many as 100 million lives – was only made available to the global population in 1946, more than two decades after the virus surfaced.

The SARS epidemic, which devastated Asian countries between 2002 and 2004, posed the urgent need for a vaccine as well but despite intensive research and development, the vaccine did not materialise in time and the epidemic passed without the introduction of the vaccine.

With the global COVID-19 pandemic having infected more than 4.5 million people worldwide and the death toll of the virus reaching almost 300,000, however, researchers are working under pressure to develop a viable vaccine in a much shorter period of time – a span of months rather than years.

Since the vaccine might be the only method of curbing the spread of the coronavirus, international authorities as well as governments all over the globe have invested time and funds into expediting its development.

Of course, there is no guarantee that a vaccine that is both effective and safe for human use will be available by the end of 2020, but with animal and human trials on the way for an experimental vaccine, there is a good chance that the COVID-19 vaccine will be one of the quickest-developed vaccines in history.

Who are the players involved in the COVID-19 vaccine development?

As with most vaccines, there is not just a single organisation or country that has invested its talent, funds and time into developing the COVID-19 vaccine. More than ever, there is the need for multiple organisations to take on this task, as there is more of a chance of a viable vaccine being developed if more players invest their resources into the process.

This is all the more relevant since COVID-19 is not just the concern of a single nation or entity, but is a global pandemic that has affected almost every country in the world.

More than 90 vaccines are in the process of being developed and of these, 8 are in clinical trials. A global funding campaign which has been supported by the European Union has raised 8 billion dollars (USD) for the purpose of research and manufacture of the vaccine as well as for potential COVID-19 treatments. Of the numerous vaccines being developed, the following 2 have been garnering significant media attention due to their quick progress:

The University of Oxford

A team of researchers at the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute have taken the lead in the global race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Due to the team having engineered a vaccine against a similar coronavirus last year and having proven in trials beforehand that that vaccine did not pose any harm to humans, they had a head-start in developing the new COVID-19 vaccine.

Pfizer

Upon developing an experimental vaccine, they were able to begin human trials in the UK, specifically in Oxford. The purpose of these trials is to prove that the vaccine is both effective and safe for use in humans. Britain’s AstraZeneca has also joined hands with the Oxford team to facilitate human trials.

6 rhesus macaque monkeys in Montana in the United States were also injected with the experimental Oxford vaccine under the supervision of researchers in the National Institute of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory. Following this, they were exposed to heavy levels of COVID-19 that had previously made unvaccinated macaques very sick. After 28 days, the six macaques remained healthy, proving the efficacy of the vaccine on macaques, which are the closest relatives to humans. Pfizer

Global pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, along with German firm BioNtech, also began human trials of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine in the first week of May in the United States. The company is testing 4 variants of the vaccine and after testing which variants are effective and safe, it plans to increase the scale of human trials.

While the current testing population is 360, Pfizer plans to conduct an extensive study involving thousands of people by September 2020.

When will these vaccines be ready for global use?

While vaccines are usually developed over years or decades, the time frame for the development of the COVID-19 vaccine is likely to be shorter – a matter of months rather than years.

According to the United States’ Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a global authority in the prevention of infectious diseases, vaccine development is a 5-stage process.

These processes are the:

Exploratory stage
Pre-clinical stage
Clinical development
Regulatory review and approval
Manufacturing
Quality control

The estimate for the development of the COVID-19 vaccine is 6 months to 2 years. The earliest possible availability date for the vaccine would be October 2020. Experts in the Singapore’s National Centre for Infectious Diseases suggest though, that the vaccine, might only be ready mid-2021. This is because they surmise that a completely safe vaccine might take a longer time to develop.

Clari Health Singapore will continue to bring you the latest updates on the COVID-19 vaccine.

With governments spending huge amounts to maintain their countries’ economies during the COVID-19 lockdown periods and death rates still remaining high amidst the pandemic, it is a race against time to develop a viable COVID-19 vaccine – and most importantly, one that is safe for human use.