How far are we from the coronavirus vaccine?

It's a race against time; more than 150,000 have perished and 2.2 million people worldwide have become infected with the novel coronavirus since its outbreak in China in December last year, causing top scientists to fast-track the process of producing a vaccine. The question is: how far are they from coming up with a cure and answer the ailing humanity's desperate cry for help? Experts have cautioned that vaccines usually take years to develop, and one for COVID-19 could take between 12 to 18 months.

Although the global medicine market had reached $1.2 trillion in 2018, up $100 billion from 2017, even the best of pharmaceutical firms on the planet are in the initial phase of discovering a biological preparation that could provide active acquired immunity to this deadly virus. While experts have made numerous claims in this respect, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, said last month a vaccine for coronavirus was "at least a year away". A few days ago, American tycoon Bill Gates, one of the richest international businessmen in the world, had said the coronavirus vaccine was 18 months away, though he had described some developments as "very promising".

Many of the rich nations like the United States and the United Kingdom have already poured in and contributed billions of dollars to fund scientists, institutes and pharma conglomerates in a bid to find a drug that can work wonders and pull them out of the misery and agony they are undergoing.

In one of its latest reports on the subject, WHO has revealed that over 70 coronavirus vaccines are currently being developed worldwide — with three candidates already being tested in human trials.

Citing this WHO report, various leading American and British media houses have stated that another 67 vaccines, developed by scientists worldwide, are also working towards trials in humans.

WHO maintains: “Inovio Pharmaceuticals began human testing for its coronavirus vaccine, the second to enter such trials in the US, the company announced last week. Inovio Pharmaceuticals has Food and Drug Administration permission for a safety test of a vaccine against the new coronavirus in 40 healthy volunteers in Philadelphia and Missouri. It gave its first dose of the experimental vaccine to participants on April 6. In March, the first safety test in people of a different vaccine candidate began in Seattle, developed by Moderna with the American National Institutes of Health.”

The UN-led global health agency says: “Of the two US-based drugs companies, Massachusetts-based Moderna received regulatory approval to move to human trials last month, while Pennsylvania-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals began human trials last week. The remaining 67 on WHO’s list are in preclinical evaluation at institutes, including Osaka University in Japan, the University of Queensland, Australia, the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. But public health officials say it will still take a year to 18 months to fully validate any potential vaccine – despite human trials beginning. The University of Oxford team has previously said that it could have a vaccine ready to go as soon as September.”

While the global vaccine market is expected to grow to $60bn (£46bn) this year, big profits are not guaranteed. The global vaccines industry is dominated by big players such as Pfizer, MSD, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, and Johnson & Johnson. Worldwide sales of vaccines totaled $54bn last year, and have almost doubled since 2014, according to data analysts Statista. Driving this growth is the increase of infectious diseases like influenza, swine flu, hepatitis and Ebola.”

Experts' claims

We recently heard Norwegian scientists boasting of having found a cure, and then in Pakistan, medical experts at Karachi’s Dow University of Health Sciences have claimed that they have created a drug in this regard. As per media reports, Professor Dr Saeed Qureshi of Dow University said Intravenous Immunoglobulin (IVIG) could cure the COVID-19 patients, explaining that the globulin was manufactured with purified antibodies, obtained from the recovered coronavirus patients.

On April 9, the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) had allowed clinical trials of blood plasma therapy to treat coronavirus patients in Pakistan, having already approved manufacturing of the raw material of an anti-malarial drug, Chloroquine.

Plasma (the fluid in blood teeming with antibodies post-illness) has already proven effective in small studies to treat infectious diseases, including Ebola and SARS.

On March 31, Messrs Johnson & Johnson had announced plans to team up with the US government to invest more than $1 billion in a new vaccine against COVID-19, aiming to begin clinical trials by September.

Messrs Gilead, a US biotech business that makes anti-HIV drugs, has announced it will try its drug called “Remdesivir". Meanwhile, a drug named “Kaletra", a combination of two anti-HIV drugs from pharma group Messrs AbbVie, is being trialed on patients in China. Both trials are based on existing medicines.

On the other hand, the World Health Organization hopes a vaccine will be ready within 18 months.