'Will take 2 yrs to develop coronavirus vaccine'

March 12, 2020 21:21

Amid the coronavirus scare, the Indian Council of Medical Research said that vaccines for the virus will take a minimum of 1.5 to 2 years to come into existence.

"Coronavirus is difficult to isolate but our first effort has been successful as now we have 11 such isolates. Figuring this isolate was a prime requisite for doing any kind of research. Now, we have a virus and it is safer to start from that base rather than the sequence of the gene to look at what should be the pretopes -- those which can lead to the development of the antibodies and what are those regions that should be used to vaccine," Dr Raman R Gangakhedar, head of ICMR told reporters in a press conference.

He also said, "For the vaccine to come into existence we need to understand that it will take 1.5 - 2 years with expatiated clinical trials and expatiated approvals to actually see it being used."

The ICMR head, however, said that certain viruses can reoccur with severity even after the vaccines being given.

"Hence, we need to factor the part that it could take a long time and there are potential hazards regarding the vaccination," he added.

For now, we must try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus as much as possible and contain it, the ICMR head said.

-- ANI

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