"Warp Speed" Search for a Vaccine

"It's been going on since February, so you need to sleep sometime, right? At least, I can't just go on and on and on. We work sometimes 15, 16 hours a day. I'm not going to lie and say that's every day, because that's just not sustainable, at least not for me, anyway. Most of the people are working six, seven days a week. And it's tiring. I'm not gonna lie about that either. It wears on you after a while, because it's not just been, like, six weeks of working hard now. It's been four months, right?"
"One of the things we looked for after we vaccinated the animals was, do they have neutralizing antibodies -- do they have antibodies that block the virus from infecting cells? And they do."
"A vaccine that doesn't work, maybe that's not the end of the world A vaccine that's not safe that would be a huge problem. I think everyone is acutely aware of that risk."
"I don't think you have a 100 million doses by then [one year's time], and even if you had 100 million, that's nothing [who gets vaccinated?]. The country that has the most cases? Your country, regardless of how many cases you have?"
"I think that part becomes problematic."
Dr.Darryl Falzarano, vaccine specialist, University of Saskatchewan

"I think we have the confidence of parents in this country. But you should be skeptical -- I'm going to be skeptical about these vaccines when they come out."
"I want to see the data. Everyone should want to see the data. I think there's a lot at stake here."
"but I'm talking about the reasonable level of skepticism that anybody should have before putting something in their body."
"We better make sure that before we inoculate millions of people, tens of millions, many of whom are going to be healthy, young people who are unlikely to die from this virus, that we make sure we hold it to the highest standard of safety and efficacy before we put it out there."
Dr.Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Scientists work in the VIDO-InterVac laboratory where the organization is currently researching a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. David Stobbe / University of Saskatchewan

"We'll trust a vaccine to the extent that we trust the system that brought us the vaccine."
"A lot of planning around returning to a fully open society rests on a lot of people getting this future vaccine."
"This is also going to be a big and difficult decision for people to make and everyone needs time to process it and everyone needs really good information."
"We know already that there is a lot of spin."
Maya Goldenberg, associate professor of philosophy, University of Guelph

The laboratory at the Vaccine and Infections Disease Organization International Vaccine Centre at University of Guelph is headed by Dr.Falzarano, leading a 12-member team of researchers working full out in the hopes of succeeding in isolating a safe and effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, funded by a $1-million federal grant. Dr.Falzarano's lab is only one of many within Canada, and well over a hundred of similar such labs operating globally, in a furious hunt for a way to stop COVID-19's infection and death rate globally.

A recent report alerted that the vaccine they're working on succeeded in inducing a notable immune response in ferrets used as animal models in the lab because unlike other animals the creatures are highly susceptible to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Ferrets have that distinction in common with humans and cats; a susceptibility to infection by the virus, whereas other animals like dogs, pigs, chickens and ducks are not susceptible.

In the laboratory, the ferrets were exposed to the virus after receiving two doses of the experimental vaccine. A vaccine whose purpose is twofold to be seen as successful; 1) it must put a halt to the virus replicating in the lungs, and 2) it must put a halt to those infected shedding the virus and infecting other people. The second phase of the vaccine's viability is to test it on hamsters, and from there, scheduled for fall, "first-in-human" studies, with the use of a human-grade version of the vaccine.

In this March 16, 2020 file photo, a patient receives a shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

Dr.Falzarano and his lab had been focused on developing vaccines for camels to protect against acquiring MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), until the emergency we know as SARS-CoV-2 arrived on the world scene with a resounding thud. A vaccine against coronaviruses in humans has never up to the present efforts, succeeded. Which explains why there is "no totally clear pathway forward as to what that really should be", explained Dr.Falzarano. So the 132 other vaccines now being developed in labs world-wide are operating in a blind alley of chemical exploration.

Dalhousie University researchers are in the process of awaiting research ethics board approval to lead the first Canadian trials of a vaccine developed by Chinese manufacturer CanSino Biologics. Elsewhere, ten new experimental vaccines are currently being used in human trials in the hope that among them there will be a safe and effective solution to the virus's threat to humanity. There exists, without doubt, many in the public, and perhaps in the scientific world as well, who will be skeptical of any vaccine developed by a consortium of Chinese-Canadian developers.

The urgency to develop a reliable vaccine is manifest by the sweeping spread and devastating effect on human life, the global economy and the ability of medical professionals everywhere to cope with the still-unfolding catastrophe. All vaccine specialists are consumed with the need to produce a viable vaccine as expeditiously as possible, for countless lives depend on it, much less to halt the wholesale social disruption and the disastrous economic fallout worldwide.

While normally under conventional circumstances it takes up to a decade to develop a successful new vaccine, the current emergency exemplified by the global pandemic weighs heavily on the side of a speedy solution, and hopes for a developed vaccine within the space of a year, a year-and-a-half, are high. Taking into account the need for safety above all, in the observance of regulatory data. A survey by researchers at Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communications discovered a strong majority of 2,000 (73 percent) Canadians would 'definitely' or 'probably', accept a COVID vaccine, but 10 percent would not, with 17 percent uncertain.

Clearly, there is a need for the public to be introduced to the concept of an emerging vaccine as a solution to the COVID infection problem, to clear up any uncertainties and misunderstanding that may exist and increase the acceptance rate. Even while recognizing that die-hard vaccine rejectionists will never hear an argument in favour of vaccines, scientific or not. "How do we know what to believe", with the face for a vaccine having become political, a "geopolitical fight between China and the U.S.A.", to be the first, pointed out Dr.Goldenberg.

President Donald Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" set a target of securing 300 million doses by the end of 2020, to be used exclusively for the U.S. population, and then ramped up further production could be used elsewhere. This runs counter to what members of the EU and Canada and Australia and New Zealand have agreed between them, that any successful vaccine should be openly and freely available internationally and not withheld within geographical borders.

The "warp speed" research also brings up other types of concern, bringing to mind a poor strain of vaccine for the swine flu pandemic, where the inoculations were held to be faulty, producing a number of seriously deleterious health effects such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder. Public trust was damaged when children developed high fevers "or did not mount an immune response at all", leading to a boost for the anti-vaccine movement.