LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Vaccines take time, development, trials and before this year the fastest developed vaccine took four years. But scientists hope a COVID-19 vaccine could come in the next 12 months.
"Doing it within a one year turn around is unprecedented so we have to do this very carefully and do a lot of field trials", said Paul McKinney, Ph.D, University of Louisville School of Public Health and Information Sciences.
Experts thought COVID-19 was going to behave like the flu and go away in the summer but we've learned in the last few weeks that's not going to happen. Now, the race toward treatment is moving faster than even before.
Multiple companies are currently efforting multiple different vaccines right now.
McKinney explained, "The idea is by trying so many different strategies at one time- surely one of them or more than one maybe 2 or 3 if were lucky will all work."
But before you have access to a vaccine, companies will run lengthy trials on about 30-thousand volunteers. Then they'll have to prioritize and decide who will get the doses first.
"This simple answer- who should get the vaccine first- the persons who need it the most who would benefit the most from it- health care workers are looked at as priority because they're exposed on a daily basis", McKinney said.
As for updates on treatments- experts say the two most promising avenues right now are plasma, which will be used to help those who are sick, and nitric oxide, which is something health care workers are using before going into COVID units. Both are still in the trial phase.
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