When will we get the Coronavirus vaccine?

image source- timesofindia.indiatime.com

We adopted social distancing and work from home but these are not a part of our normal life. To lead a normal life we must and foremost need vaccines for this virus. But how long will it take? How long do normal vaccines take time to develop? 

image source: New York Times 

This image shows how much time will it take for coronavirus vaccine by the conventional method.

image source: New York Times

This image shows what our goal is 

The Vaccine Process

To understand why we don't have a vaccine ready for coronavirus yet we must understand the process of vaccine making. A complex vaccine making task could simplified in four steps. 

1. Academic Research- First step for any vaccine is to determine the genetic sequence of the virus. How does the virus regenerate and at what rate? This alone takes a year but we are fortunate enough that the Chinese doctors published the genetic sequence in January. Scientists also gained time by the research of SARS and MERS. According to the article published in the New York Times, scientists say the newly emerged coronavirus is closely related to SARS- CoV sharing roughly 80% identity at the nucleotide level.
2. Pre-clinical trials- According to scientists, the trials are usually divided into three phases. In the first phase of trials, scientist tests the effectiveness of the vaccine in animals and then in small scale human trial. The second phase of the trial is done at a medium scale on humans who are at risk of infection. While they check if there are any side effects or does the body creates an immune response? This alone takes a long time to study. In the third stage, a large scale human trials are done where thousands of people are involved. Usually, they test on a community, and in case of this virus, around 20,000 to 30,000 people will participate in the trials. 
3. Production- After the tests and trials, we may get a vaccine that is effective for COVID-19. Then comes the part of manufacturing and building factories for it. This is a very challenging part because we have to manufacture it so fast that we may never have done in history. The factories required for the production of these vaccines are very sophisticated and very specifically designed for a purpose. It cannot be made in any other factories where chocolates and biscuits are made. The factory building time could take 5 years alone. To reduce this time span Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding 7 factories that can be made for the production of this vaccine. 
4. Approval & Distribution- If we consider that we successfully produced vaccines then also we will need time for approval of the vaccine by the international body. You may say this may not be necessary when people are dying daily but in history, we have made a minute mistakes at this same point which has resulted in a disaster. Take the case of Polio where the vaccine was approved within a few hours but it had contained a weak virus(an antidote has a small amount of weak or dead virus) which was not really weak. The people who took the dosage of that vaccine have actually resulted in them getting Polio and due to this 11 kids were dead. So we cannot take a risk at this particular stage.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Till today we have 113 candidates of coronavirus vaccine but that doesn't mean we will get 113 types of vaccines for this virus. It's likely that 90% of candidates will fail. It is like the more horse you let to race the more probability of winning. Normally vaccines take years to develop, sometimes even decades. The fastest vaccine we have ever developed in history was for Mumps within 5 years. Take a look at this image. Image source- NY times.

NY Times

In February 2020, WHO said, it did not expect vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to become available in less than 18 months. According to NY Times, Akiko Iwasaki, professor at Yale University, said, "If we do it the conventional way, there's no way we're going to be reaching that timeline of 18 months." 

Due to this urgency, we seeing what we may never have seen. Companies are pushing the boundaries of innovation. A vaccine making company is trying to develop an oral vaccine as we have for Polio. This orally administered drug could be a masterstroke. A German company "CureVacc" is trying to make a low dosage coronavirus vaccine which will be easier to manufacture in multiples. But amidst this game, there will be compromises between safety and speed. And from both sides, the consequences will be faced by us, the human lives. 

Challenges 

image source- technologynetworks.com

While it is not sure that we could get the vaccine for coronavirus so early but let us assume that we did it. Then comes the challenging part. A question like, Who will get it first? Who will be the prime distributor? How many units should each country receive? will arise.  In the case of India, these questions could be more complex. Which state is going have it first, the state where it is manufactured or will it be centralized? Will it be given to security officials or doctors, scientists, or politicians? 

In these difficult times, there are high-level coordination between companies but governments of different countries are lacking behind. There have been allegations that European countries are being supportive and soft on WHO for coronavirus aid and first receiving the vaccine kits. American President Donald Trump earlier warned that the US will stop funding WHO. Chinese President Xi JinPing said that if China develops the vaccine for coronavirus, he will globalize it. This could be a way to regain the reputation that China lost in this pandemic. USA and China are in a race to first develop a vaccine in their respective country. Earlier in the past, we saw Space Race between USSR and the USA for sending a man in space. Now we are observing the race for coronavirus aid. 

But that's not the end of the argument. Scientists at Oxford said that if everything goes well & good and if luck is on our side then we could have a vaccine before this September.