A
vial of Vaccine, just for illustration only (credit to Nasdaq)
In
simple way, we all might know that vaccine is an antigen from a
particular virus, bacteria or other pathogen agents, injected into
human bodies.
The
main purpose is to train,
boost, encourage and trigger our immune system to recognize, then to
combat a pathogen, in this case let’s say Covid-19.
We
might wonder: why is it so long to find the effective vaccine for
Covid-19?
The
answer is that long steps and processes must be followed from
searching and selecting vaccine candidates until to be ready for mass
productions.
Step
1: Finding and develop “candidate” vaccines by available
techniques such as messenger RNA
Step
2: Testing to animal (model)
Step
3: Clinical trial to human being. Trials to small number of people
Step
4: Trial to more people. To find out how immune system responds to
potential Covid-19
Step
5: More and more patients are tested in long term.
Step
6: Reviewed by relevant agencies such as Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) in the US
Step
7: This is a final step. If FDA approves, then mass production for
cure the Covid-19
It
will take 12 to 18 months from step 1 to step 7, if everything goes
well. Thus, almost certainly that we will have no “medicine” to
combat Covid-19 in this cycle.