Engineering

Coronavirus Vaccine: Scientists Misdoubt An Effective Treatment Will Fail

The UK’s Chief Medical Officer said there is no guarantee of producing a working vaccine.

Published

6 years ago

April 26, 2020

As the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, continues to spread around the world and brought almost everything to a standstill, scientists are racing to find a vaccine treatment for the coronavirus.

Scientists, however, concern that it may become impossible to find a vaccine and believe the world may have to simply learn to adapt to the permanent threat of COVID-19.

Chris Whitty, the UK’s Chief Medical Officer, told a Parliamentary committee on Friday that it may not be possible to stimulate immunity to the virus, according to Business Insider.

Whitty said: “The first question we do not know is ‘do you get natural immunity to this disease if you have had it, for a prolonged period of time?’”

Coronavirus Vaccine: Scientists Misdoubt An Effective Treatment Will Fail 14 — Chris Whitty, the UK’s Chief Medical Officer. Photograph: Reuters

“Now if we don’t then it doesn’t make a vaccine impossible but it makes it much less likely and we simply don’t know yet.

He said that there was a little bit of evidence that some people have been reinfected with this having had a previous infection.

“That’s a slightly concerning situation,” he added.

First human trials in UK

Within the frame of first human trials for COVID-19 in Europe has begun in Oxford, UK. More than 800 people were recruited for the study and two volunteers were injected.

Whitty told the committee that the evidence from other forms of coronavirus was that “immunity to the virus decreases relatively quickly.”

Speaking of the probability of a working vaccine, Whitty said there is no guarantee of success.

He warned the world needs “to be careful that we do not assume that we are going to have vaccine for this epidemic.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday also cast doubts in a statement that there is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.

In an interview with The Observer, David Nabarro, professor of global health at Imperial College, said people around the world should not expect a vaccine to come to the rescue in the short term.