Today’s Topic Is Required time and process to produce vaccines
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, tens of millions of people have died and the world-wide economy has been drastically influenced. Because the death ratio is not as severe as SARS-CoV and won’t be affected by high temperatures in summer, COVID-19 can be more easily spread over the world to infect more people and cause more damage. Now people around the world are waiting for the appearance of effective vaccines to control this disaster. However, to devise an effective vaccine is not that simple, it should follow strict processing rules, firstly laboratory research, secondly clinical tests and lastly manufacture. Generally it takes around 20 years to finish all these steps and get well-performed vaccines, but the vaccines are resilient, long-lasting and don’t have many side effects. Under special circumstances, such as this well-spread infection, time required on each stage can be greatly shortened by several parallel researches and tests going on simultaneously. This parallel process is most distinct during the first stage, because there are many ways to devise a vaccine involving using weakened virus or taking out specific part of virus to serve as antibody. So it is obvious that this first research stage is the most creative part since there are many ways to weaken a virus biologically or chemically, and to choose an anti-body part. There are several laboratory vaccines testable at this moment, but what’s stressful is that being testable is only the beginning of the whole process. The most time-consuming part is clinical testing, it needs to strictly follow certain orders. Clinical testing has also been divided into three parts, phase one focusing on intensity of triggered immune ability, phase two focusing on the right dosage and delivery method of vaccines on a wide population and phase three focusing on determining safety and potential side effects on people who are about to use. Lastly, manufacturers use different pipelines to produce different vaccines because every vaccine uses a different composition.
From all above, it is laborious and time-consuming to produce vaccines but collaboration can speed up this process.
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