The quest to find an effective vaccine for COVID-19

With newspaper headlines reporting it is unlikely that a coronavirus vaccine will be ready to manufacture on a mass scale until the second half of 2021—caveat being that this will depend on successful trial results—the race is on to accelerate the time scale.

Coronaviruses include a range of organisms that can cause diseases, including the common cold and the current SARS-CoV-2. Despite the original severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus emerging in 2003, the current pandemic, caused by the related novel coronavirus, COVID-19, appears to have taken the world by surprise.

The 2003 SARS epidemic never reached pandemic proportions but nonetheless affected 26 countries. It resulted in more than 8000 cases and nearly 800 deaths (World Health Organization (WHO), 2020a), but a vaccine was never developed. A similar disease, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), also caused by a coronavirus, emerged in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

Fortunately, for the development of a vaccine for COVID-19 several vaccines for MERS are in the development stages, and these can hopefully trigger the development of antibodies and T cell immunity. Because MERS is caused by a close relative of COVID-19, the basis for a successful vaccine appears promising (Drug Target Review, 2020).