The coronavirus pandemic is increasingly causing trouble to people of the planet. An approx number of 1,000,000 people have been infected by the disease. In a parallel way, scientists from all around the world are working on making effective vaccines for the same. The medical departments are on their way to put the vaccines on trial in other countries. Scientists from the U.S, China, and Europe are mainly involved in discovering the medicines and vaccines in these 3 months since the spread of COVID-19.
A Chinese pharmaceutical company named CanSino Biologics has come up with a vaccine Ad5-nCoV which has been approved and will soon be sent to a phase 1 clinical trial in humans. The vaccine is co-created by the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. The team hopes to use this with a harmless virus to fight against coronavirus disease. According to sources, the vaccine would be tested at foreigners living in China before putting the vaccine trial to other countries Results of the trial will be published in April itself. The richest man in China, Jack Ma has pledged 100 million yuan to support COVID-19 treatment.
The U.S has begun the phase 1 trial of a vaccine with the global support of countries including India and Norway. The trial started at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. Major pharmaceutical companies working on the vaccine in the U.S are Arcturus Therapeutics, Johnson & Johnson and Inovio Pharmaceuticals. J&J has said that its experimental coronavirus vaccine would start by September 2020.
Europe and the US are working together on developing the vaccines. The EFPIA is collaborating with the Innovative Medicines Initiative for the development of diagnostics and treatments.
Other than the above-mentioned countries, Australia is one where researchers from the University of Queensland have produced a vaccine candidate. The researchers have an aim to produce the vaccine largely for some additional testing purposes. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations or CEPI co-funded in this initiative. The U.K government also committed an amount of $52 million to support the research for vaccines and treatments globally. The European Commission offered 20 million euros to a German company named CureVac to work on the vaccine against coronavirus.
However, there has been tremendous competition within pharmaceutical companies in the vaccine invention. In this case, both large and small pharmaceutical companies will gain profit. Countries with a large number of coronavirus cases recommend BCG vaccines for patients with life risk. This vaccine is primarily used for TB patients. A certain group of scientists is also using pieces of raw genetic code such as DNA or RNA. One of which when injected into the body, will begin producing bits of viral proteins, thus enabling the immune system to fight against the disease.
The death toll of novel coronavirus has crossed 35,000 worldwide. Countries like Italy and the United States have surpassed the number of cases in China. A coronavirus vaccine might take a year to come up into the medical world, only if things go smoothly.