New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian has actually cautioned that social distancing limitations will remain in place in her state “up until a vaccine is discovered”.
But exactly what goes into developing a vaccine for a brand-new disease? And for how long will that take?
SARS-CoV-2, the infection that triggers coronavirus, was only identified a few months ago, and while researchers have actually been quickly finding out about the infection and the illness it causes, there’s still a lot about it we don’t understand.
However that doesn’t mean the quest for a vaccine is originating from a standing start.
Rapid vaccine development innovations indicate that the time it requires to develop a vaccine, which used to be in the order of two to five years, might be condensed down to the 12–18 month timeframe that numerous specialists have actually been describing.
And the science that has gone into establishing past vaccines also offers scientists a jump on COVID-19
Even so, producing a brand-new vaccine isn’t as basic as taking an existing vaccine and swapping the viruses, stated Larisa Labzin, an immunologist from the University of Queensland.
” For each virus or different germs that triggers an illness, we need a various vaccine due to the fact that the immune response that’s installed is various,” Dr Labzin said.
Different approaches to building vaccines
University of Queensland researchers are among the groups worldwide dealing with a potential vaccine for COVID-19
Supplied: The University of Queensland
Before we had vaccines, the main method to end up being immune to a disease was to catch it and after that recover.
In the procedure of recuperating from an infection, your body develops antibodies and specialised immune cells that learn to combat that pa