According to the CDC, over 6.3 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with the coronavirus COVID-19, the new respiratory virus. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks.
With that said, the world, including pharmaceutical companies and businesses, are scrambling to create a vaccine. Currently, vaccines in development around the world are in various stages of testing. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that even though a vaccine hasn't been proven yet, it's not going to stop the production of what could be the vaccine.
"We're going to start manufacturing doses of the vaccines way before we even know that the vaccine works, so that by the end of the year the prediction of the statistical analysis and the projection of cases indicate that we may know whether its effective, efficacious or not by maybe November, December, which means that by that time we hopefully would have close to a 100 million doses," Fauci said in early June during a live video interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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"And by the beginning of 2021, we hope to have a couple of hundred million doses," he added. "So it isn't as if we're going to make the vaccine show its effective and then have to wait a year to rev up to millions and millions of doses. That's going to be done as we're testing the vaccine."
This statement is not sitting well with some and others say it's taking too long. In a recent poll among Black American health enthusiasts, over 70% of respondents say they will not take a COVID-19 vaccine if one becomes available.
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But Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, confirms Dr. Fauci's statement: "If all goes well,...
...maybe as many as 100 million doses by early 2021" would be possible, Collins said.
The third and final phase of trials testing an experimental vaccine developed by Massachusetts-based biotech firm Moderna will begin in July. A few other vaccine candidates, including one developed by U.K.-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, are also showing promise, according to Fauci.
Dr. Greg Poland, director and founder of Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group, said natural immunity from coronaviruses SARS-CoV-1 and MERS can be detected two to three years after recovering from infection. However, immunity for seasonal coronaviruses can last as little as 80 days to several years in some people.
