A Look at the Most Promising Candidates for a Covid-19 Vaccine
Drug companies and university scientists are testing scores of possible inoculations.
An engineer with an experimental Covid-19 vaccine at Sinovac Biotech’s facilities in Beijing on April 29.
Photographer: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images
From the U.S. to China to Germany, scientists are working around the clock to find a vaccine against the novel coronavirus. While experts caution that the process will take time—and that it’s not even a sure bet one can be found—some researchers say a vaccine could be ready for emergency use by the end of the year. The Trump administration has announced “Operation Warp Speed” to have an inoculation ready as soon as possible.
Most of the programs are in their early stages, meaning the gold standard of data, clinical trials with “blinded” placebo and therapeutic groups, is still a ways off. In normal times, the process to approve a drug or vaccine is slow and painstaking. It can be accelerated but at the risk of incurring unforeseen harm. When rules are loosened in the desire to get a vaccine to market quickly, it’s important to cast a skeptical eye on too-good-to-be-true data. It’s also possible that more than one usable vaccine could emerge. In the polio epidemic of the 1950s, scientists developed two different kinds, first an injection and later oral drops, to help eradicate the disease.