Data chart (Reuters) [OCEAN, May 24 | War Epidemic Time Zone] According to Reuters on the 23rd, the United States plans to carry out a large-scale test, which will recruit more than 100000 volunteers to test about six of the most promising new coronavirus candidate vaccines, so as to strive to provide safe and effective vaccines by the end of 2020.
According to the report, it usually takes 10 years for a general vaccine to be developed and tested, but in order to quell the epidemic as soon as possible, the overall duration is planned to be shortened to several months. In order to achieve this goal, vaccine manufacturers with leading research and development process have agreed to share data and lend their clinical trial network to competitors for use in the event of their candidate vaccine research and development failure.
The report also mentioned that in the past, the vaccine research and development should first carry out animal tests, then carry out a small safety test for healthy volunteers, and then carry out a slightly large-scale study. The final stage only includes large-scale tests for thousands of people. Only when these steps are completed can vaccine researchers carry out mass production of millions of doses.
However, in the face of the pandemic, many steps will overlap. It is expected that large-scale testing will begin in July. For candidate vaccines that have proved safe in small early studies, each vaccine will target 20000 to 30000 volunteers for testing.
Dr. Larry Corey, a vaccine expert at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the United States, said that there may be 100000 to 150000 people participating in the above research, and he is helping to design the test. Dr. Francis Collins, president of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said: "If there is no safety problem, the research will continue to advance."
However, the report points out that this method is risky, because some safety problems may only occur in large-scale experiments. According to a survey conducted jointly by Reuters and Ipsos, Americans are worried about the speed of vaccine development. (Liu Qiang from www.haiwai.com)
