So How Far Are We From A Vaccine
By: Shaan Bharwani
Tags: Medicine, Vaccines, Covid 19, Pharmaceutical

JEC ATLANTA — For most of America, March 13th marked the last day of normalcy before mask mandates, school shutdowns, and state lockdowns began. It’s now the middle of October, and talks of a vaccine have reached a crescendo as hundreds of institutions work tirelessly to put a definitive end to this pandemic. Each day, we draw closer to a successful vaccine, but where exactly are we on the timetable right now?

How Long Vaccines Take

Medical institutions are attacking Covid-19 on an exponentially accelerated timetable compared to previous vaccine developments. In previous undertakings, vaccine development has taken “10–15 years and [has] involved a combination of public and private involvement” (The History of Vaccines, 2018). The contrast between today’s endeavor and past vaccine developments is apparent. Nearly all vaccines are produced when the virus in question isn’t a global crisis and when the development teams have no time crunch. The first stage of a vaccine’s development is the exploratory phase, which usually takes between 2 and 4 years. For Covid, the exploratory phase lasted 3 months. The vaccine advanced into stage two, the preclinical stage, lasting another 3 months and has begun human test trials through phases with varying sample sizes. While a typical vaccine would spend years in each of these stages, the Covid-19 vaccine is being rushed through human trials to combat the 9 million domestic and 31 million foreign cases.

Obstacles

Johnson & Johnson is one of the leading pharmaceuticals working to produce the Covid vaccine. Initially, their Phase I trials were very promising. Their potential vaccine was able to bind to the virus and exterminate it. One week ago, however, the conglomerate made headlines due to an immediate halt in their trials. Neither the FDA nor the company itself was allowing any further testing due to “a potential vaccine-linked illness in a participant” (The Hill, 2020). These vaccine shortcomings are not exclusive to America; Britain had very similar results just a month prior. AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical, halted their trials on September 8th due to “a serious neurological condition that might have been caused by the vaccine” (USA Today, 2020). These unexpected failures have been extremely detrimental in the race towards the end of this pandemic, but they have been described as beneficial by other health professionals. Ashish Jha, Brown University’s public health dean, was “heartened” by the failures as they have kept pharmaceuticals accountable to guarantee safety for the general public when the eventual vaccine is released (Jha, 2020). While the coronavirus rages on, especially in the United States, vaccines are consistently being held up by the unavoidable mistakes that accompany a rushed testing process. While companies work to minimize the amount and frequency of these failures, they are nonetheless inevitable when the timetable is significantly accelerated.

When We Should Expect It

It’s unfair to assume an absolute expected date on an undertaking that is supposed to last exponentially longer than it will. But, a general estimate is that there should be an actionable vaccine discovered between the beginning of November and the end of 2020. The belief is that the successful vaccine will exist by the end of this year but distribution efforts will not be immediately acted upon in order to assure the safety of the immunization (NY Times, 2020). Conservative estimates for total immunization are that the total population of the United States will receive the vaccine through the middle of 2021 but all lockdowns and mandatory restrictions will be lifted well before then. As of right now, there is visible light at the end of the tunnel.

Works Cited

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation

https://onlinepublichealth.gwu.edu/resources/producing-prevention-the-complex-development-of-vaccines/

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanrhe/article/PIIS2665-9913(20)30341-6/fulltext

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-exactly-where-were-at-with-vaccines-and-treatments-for-covid-19

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/521100-halted-clinical-trials-put-focus-on-covid-19-vaccine-transparency

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/19/health/johnson-and-johnson-vaccine-trial-transparency/index.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/10/12/johnson-johnson-covid-19-vaccine-trial-paused-unexplained-illness/5975253002/

https://www.astrazeneca.com/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/health/covid-vaccine-when-available.html