Laboratories around the world are working to develop a vaccine that can stop the virus and prevent a new outbreak.
The number of reported infections worldwide continues to rise and has now reached 6.3 million, while the number of deaths has exceeded 377,552. A total of 195 countries are affected by the virus and the priority for all of them is to find a vaccine to prevent a new outbreak.
It should be recalled that SARS-CoV-2 is a type of coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease and that to date the vast majority of the population is still vulnerable to infection.
For the time being, the virus continues to circulate freely among people, which is a cause for concern after it became known that its contagious capacity is greater than initially estimated. So neither social distance nor the use of masks are effective measures to reduce the risk of contagion to relatively safe levels.
What steps need to be taken?
In addition to the difficulty of developing a vaccine against the clock, it is also important to consider other challenges that slow down the usual development process, and to achieve this it is important:
- Accelerate the development processes.
- Ensure that the vaccine can be produced on a large scale.
- Ensure mass vaccination campaigns so that everyone has access to it.
On the other hand, once the vaccine has been developed, it will be essential to test its efficacy and whether or not it is safe for humans.
Therefore, it will have to undergo a rigorous and lengthy process divided into the following three phases:
- Phase I. The vaccine is tested in a small group of people and the safety and biological and immunological effects in humans are determined.
- Phase II. The sample of subjects to whom the vaccine is administered is expanded and the dose and route of administration is determined.
- Phase III. More subjects are included in the sample and the sample is expanded to several countries. The vaccine prototype is also tested against a placebo.
Once these phases have been completed, authorization will be requested from the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS). Only if authorization is obtained will the vaccine be manufactured on a large scale for use by the population.
As a final step, the efficacy of the vaccine will be tested and checks will be made to ensure that there are no adverse cases.
For now, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), of the almost 120 candidate vaccines against COVID-19, eight are in phase I or II clinical trials, while the rest are still in the preclinical phase of animal testing.