Deadly coronavirus vaccine ‘at least a year away’ for human use

The race is underway to create a vaccine for coronavirus, which has spread to more than 20 countries, killing more than 200 people. But despite the record time of isolating the virus and its genetic sequence, a vaccine will likely take a year of developing and safety testing before it becomes available.

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It will be at least a year before a safe and effective vaccine for the coronavirus will be available for human use.

An Australian vaccine for the virus known as 2019-nCoV is being developed by the University of Queensland in conjunction with CSIRO Manufacturing. It will take 16 weeks before that is ready but then it must undergo rigorous safety testing in animals before it can even face human trials.

Computer generated image of the coronavirus. Picture: Science Photo Library

Dr Debbie Eagles, Deputy Director at CSIRO, said her team obtained the live virus from Australia’s first identified case in Melbourne on Friday and was growing it in a high-containment lab in Geelong.

“Our facility is preparing to evaluate vaccines as they become developed. We know that the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is supporting our work around that preparedness,” she said.

“They are funding three separate consortiums working on three different methods for vaccine development and one of those is the University of Queensland working alongside CSIRO manufacturing in Melbourne to develop the methodology.”

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While they should receive the first vaccine by May, the CSIRO safety testing will take several months.

“Does the vaccine work as well as expected, or do we need to tweak it, that is the first step,” Dr Eagles said.

“Then there will be some work in animals and we will reduce that to the minimum time. We’d be looking at weeks to months.”

Scientists at the CSIRO are growing the coronavirus isolated from the first confirmed case in Australia.

Scientists around the world are working on a coronavirus vaccine.

Professor Kristine Macartney, head of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, said safety testing was paramount, no matter how pressing the need.

“They are obviously in a race against the clock to get a vaccine candidate that can be taken out of the laboratory and tested in animals in the first instance,” she said.

“It is hard to image, even with the expedited time frame, that there would be a vaccine available for wide-scale population use in anything less than 12 months

“Once you develop a vaccine, it is important you have enough confidence in the fact it is going to be useful, effective and also that it is going to be safe. Each step, whether in animals and healthy humans, those steps are critically important and can’t be overlooked.”

Scientists at the CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Lab will be testing the vaccine.

CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Lab are growing the coronavirus to help find a vaccine.

SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) killed almost 800 people and infected over 8000 globally after the outbreak in 2002-2003. It took scientists about 20 months from the release of the viral genome to get a vaccine ready for human trials. The virus petered out before the vaccine was released.

MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) which broke out in 2012, has infected 2494 people and killed 858 but a vaccine for humans is still in animal trial stage.

Both are caused by coronavirus variants that jumped from animals to humans.

“SARS was a virus that was able to be stopped in its tracks but this virus is looking very widespread through parts of China, so the question is how established it might become over time,” Prof Macartney said.

The difference between this public health emergency, as opposed to swine flu (2009) ebola (2014), zika virus (2015) and SARS is the rapid rate of spread due to air travel. More than 20 countries have now recorded cases outside China.

“We are still in early days with the epidemic and understanding the extent of human to human transmission and how severe this will be or how easily it is to contain the virus by isolating people,” Prof Macartney said.

“Spanish flu took three years because people travelled by boat, now it can take three hours and it’s something we need to grapple with.”

Originally published as Deadly coronavirus vaccine ‘at least a year away’ for human use