The Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine: What You Need to Know

The race to slow the coronavirus pandemic is in full swing, with researchers all over the world looking for treatments and methods to prevent the continued spread. Social distancing measures and masks can help to slow the transmission, but the truth is that our best hope is to create a vaccine. Vaccines work by introducing your body to a safe version of a virus and letting your system learn how to fight it off without any risk to your health. For COVID-19, there is much we don’t yet know about how long immunity might last, but a vaccine could offer at least some protection, particularly if herd immunity exists.

The truth is that the development of a new vaccine can take years, but in this crisis, researchers have expedited the process in the hopes of creating a vaccine in a year at most. Will such a vaccine be safe? How can researchers make it happen so quickly?

Developing a COVID-19 Vaccine

Luckily for researchers, creating a vaccine for this particular virus will not require them to start from scratch. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause a variety of respiratory diseases, including the simple common cold and other more dangerous diseases, such as MERS and SARS. The virus that causes COVID-19 is closely related to the one that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), so the previous research undertaken on this disease (and MERS) gives researchers a head start in developing a vaccine.

Emerging Challenges

For this vaccine, there are some challenges that researchers must overcome. The first one relates to safety. Even with the fast-tracked timeline, it is crucial that the resulting vaccine be safe for use on humans. While there are a few SARS vaccines that have been tested on animals, many of those have shown some problems. Extensive testing will be necessary to ensure safety. Another concern is long-term protection. Reinfection is a possibility, so any vaccine developed would need to offer at least some long-term protection. It’s possible that we may end up with a COVID-19 vaccine, much like the flu vaccine, if this virus mutates as other ones often do.

Manufacturing a Vaccine

Another challenge will come in producing enough of the vaccine quickly so that it can be distributed across the world. The last thing anyone wants is for only those countries producing the vaccine to have access to it, so decisions will need to be made. Manufacturing will depend in large part on the type of vaccine created. With so many researchers working on the problem, we can only hope to see a working vaccine soon.