Scientists in several countries, including China, Russia and the United States, are pushing ahead with research into a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, but the results of their work may become available when the infection outbreak is over and there is no need for the vaccine any more, said Russia’s expert on particularly dangerous infections, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Viktor Maleyev.
“We may have a vaccine when the infection is already over,” said Maleyev, a research adviser to the Director of the Central Research Institute for Epidemiology under the consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor. “We may have a situation similar to the one we saw during the SARS epidemic. The infection stopped and the vaccine turned out unnecessary,” he said.
Maleyev speculated that science needs motivation to speed up tests and make the production of vaccines possible before they turn irrelevant. For the time being the testing phase takes too much time. The way the vaccine influences humans and their reproductive functions has to be tested and its harmlessness proven first.
The scientist pointed out it was impossible to create a vaccine against some infections at all.
“For instance, millions die of malaria. There has been no vaccine against it yet. There is the HIV but no vaccine. There is hepatitis C. No vaccine again. Moreover, a way is to be devised of how to make vaccines extremely fast,” he said. “Otherwise some people will die while others develop immunity. When many people develop immunity, producing a vaccine will make little sense. The vaccine will not produce any noticeable effect.