LONDON Over 40 vaccines against the Novel Coronavirus (SARSCoV2) are in various stages of development across the world, an article in the New England Journal ofMedicine has listed. Onlytwo are currentlyin clinical trials, it states. Although approaches to the making of these vaccine differ, there is general consensus among experts around the world that a vaccine against coronavirus can be available only in the next 12-18 months at the earliest. The two vaccines that are into trials currently are Moderna’s RNA vaccine whose trials began at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the US earlier this month, and one developed in China that is being tried by Hong Kongbased CanSino Biologics. The first vaccine is called mRNA-1273 and was developed by NIAID scientists and their collaborators at the biotechnology company Moderna, Inc., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The trial will enroll 45 healthy adult volunteers between 18 and 55 years over approximately six weeks. Trials of the CanSino vaccine will be conducted at China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, affiliated to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The trial will recruit 108 people between March and December. It will be partnered by Hong Konglisted biotech firm CanSino Biologics, the journal noted.—AFP
