University Of Pittsburgh Researcher Says Coronavirus Vaccine Could Take Until Early Next Year
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - The researchers at Pitt tasked with developing a coronavirus vaccine say it could take until early next year to have one ready.
At this moment, the university is working on three separate vaccines.
According to the researchers, safety is the reason it takes so long to develop a vaccine and make it available to the public.
"You can show safety in an animal model, but those animals are genetically similar," said Dr. William Klimstra, an associate professor at Pitt's Immunology Department. "It results in there having to be many people who get the vaccine and are evaluated for whether or not they have adverse reactions to it. But really, honestly, in terms of the time it's going to take to get something into the marketplace that is the number one consideration."
Dr. Klimstra says, in his opinion, we'll see something like this pandemic in our future and for that reason, we will need to have treatments ready to go just in case.