Scientists and drug companies are racing to develop a vaccine to protect the world against coronavirus, with trials potentially starting within weeks.
Although that sounds like good news, it will be at least a year before a vaccine is ready to distribute to the wider population.
For those who have contracted the disease, immunisation can’t come fast enough.
On Sunday morning, a 78-year-old passenger evacuated from the contaminated Diamond Princess cruise ship became the first Australian to die from the disease.
His wife is also being treated for the coronavirus and remains in hospital.
At this moment, more than 20 potential vaccines designed to prevent the coronavirus are in development around the world, the World Health Organisation’s director-general said on Friday.
Scientists from Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity were the first to grow the virus outside China in late January, providing crucial information to global scientists about the virus.
The University of Queensland is already prepared to start testing a vaccine that they think could work, while researchers at CSIRO’s high-containment facility in Geelong continue to analyse the characteristics of the virus.
This week, US biotech firm Moderna produced a vaccine ready for trials.
Juan Andres, Moderna’s chief technical operations and quality officer, announced the vaccine was ready to enter a Phase 1 study in the United States, which would likely involve testing on a small number of healthy humans.
“I want to thank the entire Moderna team for their extraordinary effort in responding to this global health emergency with record speed,” Mr Andres said.
“The collaboration across Moderna, with NIAID, and with CEPI has allowed us to deliver a clinical batch in 42 days from sequence identification.”
Despite the breakthrough, the vaccine probably won’t become widely available until 2021.
Why will it take so long?
The short answer: Safety.
The danger of distributing an ineffective vaccine, or worse – a harmful one – is not worth rushing one onto shelves in a frantic effort to beat COVID-19.
Professor Ben Cowie, an infectious disease specialist at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, said all vaccines had to undergo a series of tests before they were deemed safe – no matter how urgently they were needed.
First, a vaccine had to pass ethical oversight tests, government safety assessments and animal testing studies before it was trialled on healthy humans, he said.
After that, the vaccine needs to pass a series of approvals before it is tested again using preclinical and clinical trials.
“This process takes months to years, not a week,” Professor Cowie told The New Daily.
“If the vaccine is not effective, that’s a big problem. But if it’s harmful, then it could undermine people’s faith in vaccination in general.”
He said “fraudulent science” spread by anti-vaxxers was already a big problem.
Last year, the US had its biggest measles outbreak in 25 years, despite the contagious disease being declared eliminated in 2000.
The number of cases was highest in communities with low vaccination rates.
How did we stop other deadly epidemics like SARS?
Like COVID-19, the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) began in China. It is also believed to have come from bats.
From 2002 to 2003, the deadly pneumonia-like disease threw the world into chaos, claiming the lives of nearly 800 people in multiple countries and infecting thousands more.
As the epidemic spread to more and more countries, scientists worked furiously to deliver a vaccine. However, before they had an opportunity to finish the job, the disease declined and started behaving more like a seasonal flu instead.
No cases of SARS have been reported since 2003.
So what happened?
After SARS peaked, the disease stabilised and entered a “steady state” in the same way that swine flu did in 2009 and the Hong Kong flu of the 1960s. Now, they are known as common flus.
“Coronaviruses – all of which probably came from animals in our past – enter that endemic steady state,” Professor Cowie said.
“But prior to that, there is a period of time when COVID-19 will achieve a pandemic level of transmission and a substantial proportion of the population will be affected.
“The most likely outcome is that COVID-19 will spread worldwide then will probably become of the viruses that causes a common cough or cold at winter time as other coronaviruses have.”
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