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Researchers have begun working on vaccines and treatments for coronavirus, but experts suggest a treatment will likely come before vaccines, The Verge reports.
What’s going on?
- Researchers have begun working on both. But there’s a noticeable difference between the two. Experts will need to start from scratch with vaccine development. But scientists have already tried creating treatments.
- The Verge said: “Both treatments and vaccines are important for a robust and effective response to the outbreak. Treatments help people after they already have a disease; in the case of COVID-19, researchers hope to treat the around 15% of COVID-19 patients who have non-mild symptoms. Vaccines, on the other hand, help prevent people from getting sick in the first place.”
- Experts suggest it could take one year to 18 months to develop a vaccine if not longer.
- Florian Krammer, a professor and vaccine development expert at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told The Verge: “We don’t have a production platform, we have no experience in safety, we don’t know if there will be complications. We have to start from scratch, basically.”
More about the search for a vaccine:
- Researchers have started to develop vaccines and are testing them, according to the BBC News.
- BBC News said: “So there are vaccines being tested in animals, if that goes well there could be human trials later in the year. But even if scientists can celebrate having developed a vaccine before Christmas there is still the massive job of being able to mass produce it.
- BBC News said: “All of this is happening on a unprecedented timescale and using new approaches to vaccines so there are no guarantees everything will go smoothly.”