Covid-19 has now been declared to be a pandemic by the World Health Organisation. Since the very beginning of the outbreak early in 2020, the pharma industry and the medical community have been focusing their efforts on investigating drugs that can be repurposed to treat the symptoms, as well as developing new vaccines to tackle the virus’s spread.

To date, the Chinese authorities have approved an anti-viral against Covid-19 called fapilavir. This drug, which is manufacture red by Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical, and was developed to treat influenza. Other antiviral drugs being studied for repurposing are Gilead’s Ebola drug remdesivir, Roche’s rheumatoid arthritis treatment Actemra and AbbVie’s HIV drugs Kaletra and Aluvia.

How long until a Covid-19 vaccine is ready?

Although there has been success in repurposing, development of novel treatments takes much longer. Vaccines are crucial to viral pandemic management because they can confer immunity among the general population, meaning this virus will be more easily contained in the future.

There has been some debate about precisely how long this will take, primarily because Israeli researchers from the state-funded Migal Galilee Research Institute announced they might have a vaccine for the virus in eight to ten weeks. This is because they have been working on a vaccine for Infectious Bronchitis Virus, which has been found to be genetically similar to Covid-19.

Readers of Pharmaceutical Technology have been voting on how long they think it will take for a vaccine to be available to patients. With over 164,000 votes cast, the results show than almost 33% of readers believe it will take over a year, while slightly more 28% are optimistic there could be a vaccine available within three months.

Experts are clear that it will take at least a year for a vaccine to be developed against Covid-19; this situation is not helped by the likelihood that the virus has already mutated into two strains.

Source: https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/covid-19-vaccine-development/