Coronavirus vaccine might never be developed and the world needs plan B to fight pandemic, says scientist
An Australian scientist who is heading up the global search for a highly critical COVID-19 vaccine has said it may never see the light of day.
Jane Halton, the country's foremost epidemic health expert, has warned that health officials urgently need a 'plan B' to tackle the deadly contagion.
Halton has said it would be "unbelievable" if scientists across the globe are able to develop a vaccine even by early next year.
She explained there has never been a successful vaccine against other coronaviruses and thereby warned against creating "unrealistic expectations" about the same.
Halton's warning is warranted considering there is no vaccine for HIV despite a global death toll of over 32 million people over 40 years. There were 770,000 HIV-related deaths in 2008 alone.
The expert's claims come at a time when doctors across the globe are hoping that human trials of a vaccine in the United States would be successful.
"If you said we pulled out all the stops and a vaccine was approved and deemed efficacious by the middle of next year, that would be unbelievably quick … we would be ecstatically overjoyed, delighted," Halton told The Australian. "But I do think it is important not to create unrealistic expectations. No one has ever successfully developed a coronavirus vaccine, and we still don’t have a vaccine against HIV."
"I would never say never. But this is my point about an 18-month timeline: it is heroic, really tough," she added.
Halton is a former president of the World Health Assembly and has previously served as chairman on the executive board of the World Health Organization.
She is now leading research efforts at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which is supported by billionaire Bill Gates.
Earlier this week, a US firm called Novavax claimed it was set to launch a human trial for its prototype vaccine in May. They are expecting the results by July.
Despite global efforts to formulate a vaccine, Halton insisted a 'plan B' is necessary as "nothing is certain" in science.
Tech mogul Gates has argued that a coronavirus vaccine is the only way to get the world back to normal, and so he is willing to spend billions in the search for one.
The Microsoft co-founder revealed he's already having discussions on how to "accelerate" the time-sensitive research with medical organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
And while he's already invested a fortune into seven vaccine makers to scale their manufacturing, he is also calling on other countries to do more towards the research.
Gates has also granted a $31-million aid to three initiatives in the US and UK studying the effectiveness of known drugs to treat COVID-19.
The SARS-Cov-2 has brought the world to a screeching halt and led to the postponement of a number of state and global events, including the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
That said, a new vaccine prototype developed at the University of Queensland will soon be tested on the virus for the first time at a biosecurity facility in the Netherlands.
Researchers at the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences are working with Dutch company Viroclinics Xplore to conduct pre-clinical studies, hoping to get a better understanding of how the vaccine performs before human trials are conducted.