To date, several teams of scientists are working on immunization against the new coronavirus. According to experts, the studies will take months, even a year to be ready and prove their effectiveness. Research is in its experimental phase. In Seattle, United States, scientists at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute are testing the first doses of a possible vaccine on healthy volunteers, now and in a month’s time. The Chinese government says they has “successfully” developed a vaccine, which will be tested in clinical trials in April.
For now, isolation measures remain critical to reducing the spread of the virus.
Spain, meanwhile, has researchers working at the National Biotechnology Center of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) — for which the government will earmark an additional 4.5 million euros (nearly $5 million) of the 30 million (nearly $33 million) it already had budgeted — and the Foundation Against AIDS and Infectious Diseases. And a Spanish doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital, one of the world’s most renowned virologists, is studying the coronavirus there with his team: he assures that the vaccine will not be ready before the end of the year.
A possible vaccine at the National Center for Biotechnology
The team at the CSIC’s National Biotechnology Centre includes 16 scientists working on the development of the genetically engineered vaccine, Virginia Martínez Crespo and Luis Manuel Rivas report for El País.
In the presentation of their study, the scientists explain it as follows: “The main focus of our research is the study of the molecular basis of coronavirus (CoV) replication and virulence, and the identification of signalling pathways modified by the virus, to control disease. The information from these basic projects will be used to design protection strategies against CoV-induced diseases, particularly human severe pneumonia that can end in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).”
It is a method of cloning of the virus that allows its genetic manipulation to “attenuate its virulence” and thus make the vaccine possible, according to the CSIC. Using similar techniques, the team obtained a vaccine for another coronavirus, SARS, in 2002-2003.
Luis Enjuanes, a virologist at this center, explains to El País reporters: “Our laboratory was the first in the world to manage to develop a system called reverse genetics. We remove the genes responsible for neutralizing our defenses, the virus becomes attenuated and an attenuated virus is a very important vaccine candidate”.
The team is also working on developing antibodies for people already infected.
Stopping Transmission at the Foundation for the Fight Against AIDS and Infectious Diseases
The research of the Foundation for the Fight against AIDS and Infectious Diseases focuses on people who already have the virus. It is a clinical trial that does not focus on curing the virus, but on stopping community transmission, as mass contagion is called. That is why the foundation’s website says that this research is pioneering.
The scientists of this team will work with 190 people infected with mild symptoms and 3 thousand people who have been in contact with them in the areas with the highest incidence of the virus: the north of the metropolitan area of Barcelona and in Igualada, the now confined municipality of the province of Barcelona, 60 kilometers from the city.
People with the virus will be given darunavir, which is an anti-HIV antiviral, “with the aim of reducing the viral load, and therefore the ability to transmit the virus to other people.” Their close contacts will be given hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug. “With this strategy the person with COVID-19 would be infectious for fewer days and the contacts would be more protected,” explains Oriol Mitjà, the scientist leading the research. They believe that this could also protect health personnel, who are more susceptible to contagion.
Darunavir inhibits the protein that makes the virus reproduce, protease, and hydroxychloroquine, which is also used for rheumatological diseases, prevents “the virus from entering the host cell,” Mitjà explains to El País’ Jessica Mouzo.
According to Mijtà, the clinical trial takes this approach because of the high degree of contagion of this coronavirus. “Each case infects for 14 days an average of 15% of its contacts. That is, for every 20 contacts with an infected person, there are between 2 and 3 new infections,” he says in the press realease on the Foundation’s website.
The Spanish virologist at Mount Sinai
Adolfo García-Sastre’s line of research has focused on influenza over the last 25 years: he has been studying the molecular biology of the viruses that produce the disease. He is a professor of microbiology and infectious diseases at the Mount Sinai Hospital School of Medicine in New York. At the same institution, he directs the Institute for Global Health and Emerging Pathogens, and is also director of the Center for Influenza Pathogenesis Research.
The Institute for Global Health researches several infectious diseases and the pathogens that cause them. According to a report by Televisión Española, García-Sastre and his team have been studying the coronavirus that produces COVID-19.
“The easiest thing is that we don’t have a vaccine for another year. The easiest thing is that we have passed a wave, which is the wave we are passing through now. The easiest thing is that we will pass another wave; that is the wave that will occur in winter [late next year, early next year], because the virus will not disappear, and maybe by then we will have a vaccine available,” García-Sastre said.
In an interview with journalist Gloria Díez, from Burgos Conecta, the scientist went into more detail: “For a vaccine to be ready, it has to be tested and proven to work. In the United States and Europe the law does not allow vaccination without clinical trials and previous studies. As for the 90 days it could be if some country skips those trials but here that would be unethical. It will take at least seven months for it to be ready. We cannot know if it will be ready for use next winter.”
While the results of all these researches are proven to be effective and can be applied to the general population, the most vigorous thing to apply, in addition to government measures, is individual responsibility — isolation, hygiene and so-called social distancing–, for the sake of collective welfare, in order to stop the spread and harm to the most vulnerable.