COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 Informational Resource Page
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The Phases of Vaccine Development
From Research to the Clinic
The road from trials to a licensed vaccine is long and arduous. Vaccines must be thoroughly safety tested across subjects of all ages and demographics. Once determined safe, a vaccine candidate must be shown to actually prevent disease. To do this properly, a large group of people (tens of thousands) need to be administered a vaccine candidate while the pathogen actively circulates to show true efficacy amongst control and vaccinated groups (phase 3).
Even once a vaccine is fully approved for use, there will be a lag in manufacturing, administration, and population level protection. Most vaccines being developed right now are based on immunity to disease and not to infection. This means vaccinated individuals may still be infected and able to transmit the virus. However, those individuals should not fall ill and this should greatly reduce the burden on the healthcare system. In effect, even after approval of a vaccine we should expect to maintain safety and mitigation measures for some amount of time.
We are currently seeing an unprecedented global effort focused on the development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. There are over 150 different candidate COVID-19 vaccines in various stages of development and while many will fail we are already seeing licensing for emergency use in several nations.
Even once a vaccine is fully approved for use, there will be a lag in manufacturing, administration, and population level protection. Most vaccines being developed right now are based on immunity to disease and not to infection. This means vaccinated individuals may still be infected and able to transmit the virus. However, those individuals should not fall ill and this should greatly reduce the burden on the healthcare system. In effect, even after approval of a vaccine we should expect to maintain safety and mitigation measures for some amount of time.
We are currently seeing an unprecedented global effort focused on the development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. There are over 150 different candidate COVID-19 vaccines in various stages of development and while many will fail we are already seeing licensing for emergency use in several nations.
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