The lowdown on coronavirus vaccine

As the novel coronavirus strain wreaks havoc wherever it lands, great minds from all across the globe have been working tirelessly to create a vaccine that finally normalizes things.

Human trials imminent

According to several research centres, human trials are going to begin soon. But even if those trials do get the desired results, there are mountains that needed to be climbed since immunizing everyone on the planet is not going to be an easy task.

WHO’s prediction

According to the World Health Organization, the timeline for the creation of a vaccine is between one year to 18 months, which basically means that we have to brace ourselves for another wave of this contagion.

Moreover, this is a virus that is likely to change its genetic code which makes creating a stable vaccine a pretty hard job.

So who’s leading the vaccine race?

Chinese efforts to sequence the genetic composition of Sars-CoV-2 is the reason why the timeline has been scaled back by several months. At present, 35 pharmaceutical companies and several academic institutes are in the race against time to make the vaccine.

Moderna has already announced that human trials are imminent while Novavax is also getting close to finding a cure for coronavirus.

The reason why we are now at a stage where vaccines are set to be trialled is that there had already been a lot of work done on different coronaviruses strains, especially the ones that instigated pandemics in China (Sars) and Middle East (Mers).

But for now, it is pretty much clear that we need to be washing our hands regularly and avoid handshakes while the vaccine gets ready to be shipped all over the globe.