Creative Science on Steroids

"As with many other teams we are going full speed."

"It is very demanding and very fascinating. These are incredible days for us in infectious disease."

"[Development of an initial vaccine candidate can happen relatively quickly] but after that the real work starts."

"It is important that we not close the doors on what we started, so we are ready for the next coronavirus."

"It is very likely there will be a next coronavirus."

Dr.Gary Kobinger, head, Centre of Infectious Diseases, Laval University

In this Sept. 28, 2007 file photo, Gary Kobinger works in a mobile laboratory set up by the Public Health Agency of Canada in Mweka, Democratic Republic of Congo. Kobinger, one of Canada's pre-eminent vaccine researchers, says he is confident a vaccine for COVID-19 will be ready in months, not years. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Christopher Black/World Health Organization via AP, File

"It’s really important that we encourage innovation and we encourage people to be looking for solutions." 

"But then as those solutions potentially become available, it’s important that we put them through the proper process in the interest of safety, in the interest of efficacy and in order to make sure that we first do no harm."

Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director, World Health Organization emergencies program

The urgency could not be greater. The impetus is the very fact that over seven million inhabitants of Planet Earth have contracted COVID-19, and almost a half-million people have died of the disease caused by the zoonotic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, a highly infectious, sometimes-deadly, frightening illness whose effects are avidly studied even as new and more frightening complications are being revealed constantly.

Many epidemiologists frankly state that they feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of fall-out from the sudden appearance of yet another threat to human health and safety that appeared suddenly and catastrophically travelled the world, leaving carnage in its wake. Many warn that this disease is just warming up; not having yet wrought its devastation throughout many of the most vulnerable countries of the world.

And even those geographic places that have felt they have reached a safe enough level of effective control to allow their populations to begin relaxing the total lockdown and social isolation imposed upon them in an effort to bring the global pandemic to a standstill, have been shocked at its capacity to regroup, return and re-infect, causing them to stress that even with a relaxation of lockdown, defences must be maintained.

Yet through all the bleak occurrences of mass deaths among the elderly, sequestered in long-term care institutions, the prognosis of normalcy never returning, the doubts whether a safe and reliable vaccine can ever be found, the anxiety over the length of time it will take to secure the confidence of health regulators once one is found, to enable pharmaceutical companies to roll out sufficient inoculation for the world community, a bright spark of optimism has arisen.

That this note of confidence comes from a scientist who has had the experience of being involved in the creation of previous viral therapy projects and the production of numerous vaccines, included among them the development of an Ebola vaccine and treatment makes the prospect of an early release for the current condition the world finds itself in, ever more possible. 

According to Dr.Kobinger, the first SARS infection allowed scientists working to analyze it and to produce a protocol to diminish its impact, resulted in a heads-up advance in knowledge of the most recent appearance on the world stage of a deadly novel coronavirus outbreak. A scaffolding, if you will, of gained knowledge to allow the investigative work and remediative action to proceed much more expeditiously.

He now states with confidence that a vaccine against COVID-19 will take months, not up to a year or more to develop, despite that a year, year-and-a-half is considered on the basis of previous experience, to represent the length of time it ordinarily takes for such a vaccine to be developed. This, even though science is very well aware that speed cannot replace the need for safety.

As one of hundreds of scientists globally, struggling to produce a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, he and his team of researchers work seven days a week on their development of several potential COVID vaccines. A not-for-profit vaccine is listed among those candidates for development, one that may be slower than some others to complete, but is meant to be available to everyone.

The search for a vaccine is a race against time, scientists say. (AFP)

The 'real work' that Dr.Kobinger made mention of relates to the evaluation of different vaccine models in mice or other laboratory animals following three or more phases of testing on humans to ensure safety and efficacy. Among those being tested, thousands would be volunteers. While it is difficult to make a prediction of the length of time the virus will continue to plague the world community, work must continue on vaccines in anticipation of future such diseases to ensure the scientific-medical community never gets caught unprepared again to handle such a threat to the world, he stressed.

Scientist Xinhua Yan works in the lab at Moderna in Cambridge, Massachusetts

David L. Ryan | Boston Globe | Getty Images