Your Weekly Covid-19 Vaccine Update
Everything that happened in the race to find a coronavirus vaccine this week
Credit: tommy / Getty Images
There are still 11 vaccines in phase 3 clinical trials and six approved for limited use — no change from last week. None have been approved for general use.
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A reality check on the vaccine timeline
For months, President Donald Trump has claimed that a Covid-19 vaccine will be available by Election Day despite experts arguing that it’s not going to happen. On Tuesday, Pfizer, a front-runner in the vaccine race, admitted that the highly anticipated results from its phase 3 trials wouldn’t be available by the end of October — a sharp contrast to what the company had predicted and touted in previous weeks, as the New York Times reported. The next day, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a JAMA interview that a vaccine might not be available until at least next year: “Could be January, could be later. We don’t know,” he said. In the big Food and Drug Administration vaccine committee hearing last week, experts argued that people who receive an experimental vaccine need to be followed for a longer period than the current regulations demand. Doing so would allow experts to gather more safety data, but it would delay the approval of a vaccine even further.
More states sign on to an independent vaccine review plan
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state would independently review any vaccine approved by the White House before administering it to residents. (“Of course we won’t take anyone’s word for it,” he said.) It’s not the only skeptical state: This week, Washington, Oregon, and Nevada announced they would join California’s vaccine review plan. In his announcement, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said, “We believe in science, public health, and safety.” In September, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a similar plan for his state, citing mistrust in the government’s review process.
Experts criticize human challenge trials of a Covid-19 vaccine
The U.K. government announced last week that it was preparing to start a Covid-19 “human challenge” study, in which people would deliberately be exposed to the coronavirus then given a dose of a candidate vaccine. Though these trials could speed up vaccine development, they are controversial because they are risky, and people who volunteer may not fully understand the possible consequences. On Thursday, experts argued in the journal PNAS that human challenge trials for Covid-19 were unethical, saying that such studies usually have a “rescue therapy” on hand in case symptoms become too severe, but no such treatment exists for Covid-19. If it can get final regulatory and ethical approval, the U.K. study will begin in January.