TAMPA, Fla. — Labs are closer than ever to having a vaccine for COVID-19, and by the end of this month, 30,000 people will be part of a study to test the effectiveness of a new, experimental vaccine.
But are we moving too fast and skipping important scientific steps to get to a cure?
"There's always trade-offs if you're going to go a little bit fast,” said Dr. Michael Teng of the University of South Florida.
Teng said vaccine trials have gone as expected, but this might be the most accelerated pace ever for a novel virus.
"The fastest I think we've ever made a vaccine, brought it to market, is four years. And that was the mumps vaccine,” he said. The [human] papillomavirus vaccine, Gardasil, that took 10 to 15 years to come out."
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Vaccines go through three phases of clinical development, which can take years. Yet biotech company Moderna is already starting that last phase with 30,000 people at the end of the month.
The good news is the first phases have shown boosted immune systems in patients.
"It was remarkably well-tolerated. About half of the patients had fever, chills, sore arm...about what you can expect from a vaccine. Nobody had a serious adverse event,” Dr. David Agus told CBS News.
However, because of the compressed timeline of the clinical trials, we don’t know much about the long-term effects of the vaccine or even how long it will last.
“Most of us are not that worried," Teng said. "I think the only thing that's a little bit different about this vaccine trial is that most of the time we're making vaccines, we're making against the virus that we know a lot about already. And this time, we don't know very much about this virus.
"We know a little bit about viruses like it that have come out before like the first SARS virus, but beyond that…we're a little bit in the dark."
It will still be a while before any vaccine gets to the general public. The FDA has already said vaccines must prevent COVID-19 or reduce symptoms by at least 50 percent before being approved.
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