President of the USA, Donald Trump, announced phase one of the mRNA-1273, a vaccine created to control Coronavirus. The phase one will include human testing of the vaccine at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI).
The funding of the vaccine is taken care of by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases(NIAID), which is an institute in the United States’ National Institute of Health. As the vaccine is developed using mRNA, which was used to control the Zika virus, there is no scope of spread of infection via a vaccine.
Trump said on the occasion of the first phase of testing,” I'm pleased to report today that a vaccine candidate has begun the phase one clinical trial. This is one of the fastest vaccine development launches in history. Not even close. We're also racing to develop antiviral therapies and other treatments,"
Currently, they are looking for 45 healthy volunteers between the age group of 18-55 without any respiratory conditions or low immunity. The vaccine will be tested in three phases to ensure that there are no side effects of the drug and the phase one starts from 16th March.
As of now, there is no fixed treatment for the novel Covid-19; health experts are administering HIV drugs and flu medication to treat the patients. The vaccine itself will take a year or year and a half of testing and sale on the global level. Scientists are also experimenting with Remdesivir, which was effective in the case of the Ebola virus, SARS, and MERS.
In India, scientists have isolated strands of Sars-Cov-2 that were taken from the three patients in Kerala. The testing was conducted at the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV), Pune. Dr. RR Gangakhedkar, Head of epidemiology division at ICMR, gave a statement, "Isolating the virus will mean we could have our own vaccine in future.
However, there are several research projects active globally right now that are working on war footing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, but I would say it will take at least one-and-a-half to two years before a vaccine sees the light of day."
