The development of a vaccine usually takes 10 to 15 years. The most rapidly developed vaccine, the Ebola vaccine, required five years of effort. Between each step to develop a vaccine, we usually pause. This allows scientists to carefully analyze their results before proceeding to the next phase, and investors to interrupt their involvement if the outcome of the project becomes too uncertain.
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In the current context, development follows a completely different paradigm. First, the clinical trial phases are linked at an unprecedented speed. Second, the pharmaceutical companies are working hard to find a vaccine against COVID-19, while they usually work on several diseases in parallel. Factories are being prepared for the industrial production of the billions of doses needed, although it is not yet known what type of vaccine will work. On the university research side, the purse strings are untied and allow scientists to hire more assistants and buy better equipment. Health Canada, for its part, has already indicated that it is working to speed up clinical trial requests for candidate vaccines against COVID-19. We can also bet that the regulatory bodies will do everything to quickly complete the final approval. Normally, this step can sometimes be very long: it took 11 years for the FDA to approve the chickenpox vaccine in the United States.
For more details, check out our new animated graphics series on the coronavirus vaccine race.
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