Coronavirus Vaccine May Not Be Available until 2036, Experts Warn

Traditionally, effective vaccines have taken upwards of a decade to create – from the beginning of research, to clinical trials, manufacturing, and distribution.

Timelines created by the New York Times show that through all the typical research and approvals, it would take around 16 years before a successful vaccine were widely available, the Sun reported.

As the virus continues to batter the world, however, researchers have been desperately trying to expedite the process to just a fraction of the time – to around 12 to 18 months, instead.

“If you want to make that 18-month timeframe, one way to do that is put as many horses in the race as you can,” Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine told the New York Times Opinion.

Experts at the University of Oxford said earlier this week that they began human trials of a vaccine – and will know if it's successful by mid-June.

Other Chinese scientists said that a vaccine will be ready by September – in time for a second wave of the virus that many experts have anticipated.

US Coronavirus Task Force Expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said that as the FDA moves with "lightning speed," hundreds of millions of doses of a COVID-19 vaccine may be ready by next year.

"We want to go quickly, but we want to make sure it's safe and it's effective," Fauci told Today.

He added: “We're going to start ramping up production with the companies involved and you do that at risk, in other words you don't wait until you get an answer before you start manufacturing, you at risk, proactively, start making it, assuming it's going to work."

However, experts have cautioned that only a portion of vaccines that undergo trials will be successful, as they caution that it is more difficult to see possible adverse effects on a short timeline.

When fast-tracked, if it's found vaccines are unsuccessful or they pose risks, they need to be scrapped.

The WHO says: "Surveillance of the disease targeted by the new vaccine would ideally begin two or three years before the vaccine is introduced to obtain consistent baseline data on disease incidence, mortality and epidemiological patterns."

However, as the coronavirus has infected more than 3.2 million people in just a matter of months, experts have been working desperately to create a vaccine on a faster timeline.

The FDA process typically includes three phases of trials – ones that test a few dozen, a few hundred, and then a few thousand individuals.

"At any stage of the clinical or animal studies, if data raise significant concerns about either safety or effectiveness, FDA may request additional information or studies, or may halt ongoing clinical studies," the agency states.

Especially when trying to speed up the process, experts caution there is less likelihood that a vaccine will be successful.

Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale University School of Medicine and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, told the New York Times that when done the traditional way, there's no possible way to get a vaccine out in the short period that many experts are hoping for.

Iwaski said: “if we do it the conventional way, there’s no way we’re going to be reaching that timeline of 18 months.”

“They just can’t wait,” Iwaski added.

“If it turns out to be a terrible vaccine, they won’t distribute it. But at least they’ll have the capability” to do so if the vaccine is successful.

Experts and the FDA take extra caution in approving vaccines at a quick rate.

In 1955, in what's become known as "The Cutter Incident", more than 200,000 US children were given a polio vaccine that was meant to contain an inactive version of the virus.

However, the process which would deactivate the virus was defective, and more than 40,000 children ended up contracting polio, according to a study in the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

The incident left 200 children paralyzed, and 10 died.

Researchers at Oxford have said 100 million doses of the virus could be ready this year – if trials are successful.

Even when the trials prove successful, the doses will likely be prioritized at an emergency use level for certain groups, like front-line healthcare workers, before being pushed out for the general population.

Only time will tell, however, which vaccines may be effective at preventing humans from becoming ill with COVID-19.

“At this point, I’m hoping for anything to work,” Iwasaki told the New York Times.

“If it does work, wonderful, that’s great. We just don’t know.”