How COVID-19 Vaccines Got Made In A Year, Without Scientists Cutting Any Corners

Entire year 2020 has been cursed by SARS CoV-2 and the global pandemic it unleashed, bringing life and economic activity the world over to a speedy halt.

In parallel with the global pandemic outbreak, the scientific community and researchers were leaving no stones unturned to create a vaccine that could take down the novel coronavirus. And within a few months, there were several contenders who had vaccines ready for clinical trials.

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And now, within a year, one of these vaccines -- Pfizer and BioNTech's BNT162 -- has already started being applied to the common folk in the UK, Canada and some other nations around the world. While it is no news that our world really needed a vaccine at the earliest to put the pandemic behind us and get our lives back on track, it was astonishing that the entire process of developing the vaccines occurred at such a quick pace -- whereas conventionally it takes years for it to finally be out.

This is definitely making several people around the world feel hesitant to be first in line to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, and misconception is spreading like wildfire online. But even though the vaccine might have gotten ready in a year, its development could be dated back several years.

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I stumbled upon a tweet by Faheem Younus, MD, Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at UM Upper Chesapeake Health, where he revealed how the manufacturing of the vaccines didn¡¯t involve any cutting of corners, ¡°SARS-1 research saved 1-2 y in developing a vaccine candidate. Millions of cases saved 5-7 y in phase 2/3 enrollment. Govt. $$ saved 2-3 y in manufacturing. Fast track approval saved 1-2 y. That¡¯s how it worked, we didn¡¯t cut corners; we cut the crap.¡±

And that¡¯s precisely what has occurred with several of the vaccines that have shown extremely positive effects against the novel coronavirus. They¡¯ve applied existing research done on previous coronaviruses as well as technologies that they thought had potential and applied it to help crack the COVID-19 code.

Vaccines and their development

Take for example the vaccine ChAdOx1 developed by researchers at Oxford University -- which is also being mass produced by Serum Institute Of India under the label of 'Covishield'. Prof Andrew Pollard from the Oxford team said in a statement to BBC how since they had already worked on MERS coronavirus with its adenovirus vector, and when China released the genetic code of the coronavirus, they could easily create a solution to take it down.

Developing a solution for MERS was not as complicated since they had around 20 years of research for the SARS coronavirus that broke out in China around 2003-2004. They already knew how the vaccine worked, and how it used its spike to attack the human body.

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Similarly, with Moderna¡¯s mRNA (messenger RNA)vaccine, it had proven effective against MERS, another kind of coronavirus that wreaked havoc in the middle east, some years ago.

In the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the researchers have been working on the tech to develop immunotherapy treatments for cancer using an mRNA based genetic material, helping the human body to make its own antigen, for over a decade.

So clearly, you can say that these vaccines have been in development for quite a while, they just had to customise it for COVID-19 after seeing its genetic code.

Millions of cases cut time for trials

Normally, even though developing a vaccine occurs quickly, it takes time for the pharmaceutical companies to look for volunteers to participate in trials (which can involve thousands of volunteers, especially in its phase 2 and phase 3 trials) and eventually reveal to the world the effectiveness of a particular vaccine or treatment.

However, in the current situation with millions of people who were infected, and healed researchers got to better understand the coronavirus. Moreover, with the pandemic taking such a heavy toll, volunteers were eager to participate to help with vaccine development as soon as possible.

Fast track approval

Whenever we hear that a vaccine was fast-tracked, people feel it means that the authorities might have left some stones unturned to get the vaccine out as soon as possible. However, Dr. Andrew Badley, an infectious diseases physician at Mayo Clinic and head of Mayo Clinic's COVID-19 Research Task Force, explains how people need to understand what processes have been fast-tracked and what haven¡¯t.

He explained, "There was fast-track in the execution of the clinical trials. It's very important to know what parts were fast-tracked and which parts were not. The fast-track part were regulatory approvals, funding, data analysis and submission to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Those are all paperwork items.¡±

Reutters

He added, ¡°What was not fast-tracked was the enrollment of patients, clinical follow-up of these patients, capturing the events which occurred and the follow-up. These trials were executed very well. But the regulatory steps were fast-tracked. What that has allowed is for these two vaccines right now, and we anticipate more vaccines in the future, going to FDA for rapid review and hopefully approval so that we can get these vaccines out to people in a staged approach in order to get protection against COVID."

So in case you¡¯re hesitant to get vaccinated, you need to be rest assured -- the scientists and medical community have done their very best to deliver a safe and secure vaccine after several rounds of testing and enhancements that span beyond this year alone.