35 companies in race to produce wonder Vaccine to prevent COVID-19, trials started

As the scare of Coronavirus is increasing, and the world is anxiously waiting for a possible vaccine to prevent thousands of people getting infected from COVID-19 virus, around 35 pharmaceutical companies and institutes are racing against time to create such a vaccine. At least four such companies have already started testing in animals.

American Association of Advancement in Science (AAAS) reports that Boston based biotech firm, Moderna Therapeutics is speeding the vaccine through an internal safety trial in collaboration with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

The company said that it plans to distribute the vaccine to health care workers by September, this year. Moderna has shared little detail in published papers about the technology it's developing.

A leading English daily in its report says that 'both cases, work began on vaccines that were later shelved when the outbreaks were contained. One company, Maryland-based Novavax, has now repurposed those vaccines for Sars-CoV-2, and says it has several candidates ready to enter human trials this spring.'

As per the universal norms, clinical trials for such vaccines are held in the three different phases.

The first phase involves testing of vaccines on a few dozen healthy volunteers to look for its adverse effect and safety.

The second phase is about testing the vaccines on a few hundred people living in epidemic affected part of the world to see how potent the vaccine is.

The third phase is to enlarge the sample which runs into thousands of person being tested for effectiveness of the vaccine to fight the disease.

All the companies including Moderna will now have to go through these phases to finally come with a successful vaccine for the pandemic.