Vaccine Progress

[Warrigal]

Medical scientists from just about every advanced country are working on a vaccine for SARS-COV-2. Perhaps we will see a fully developed and tested vaccine sooner than we could have believed.

I saw this article today that outlines what is happening in just one of the Australian centres that are working on vaccines.

South Australian coronavirus vaccine candidate shows positive results in phase one human trials

Victorian aged care residents could be included in the next stage of testing for a potential COVID-19 vaccine that has shown positive results during phase one human trials in Adelaide.

The vaccine candidate, COVAX-19, was developed by Adelaide-based company Vaxine, which has laboratories at Flinders University.

Volunteers between the ages of 18 and 65 in Adelaide have been injected with two doses of either COVAX-19 or a placebo in the phase one trial.

One of the volunteers for the phase one Adelaide trial was SA Best MP Frank Pangallo.

"I feel great — I had my second dose of the vaccine today and no side-effects for me," Mr Pangallo said on Friday. "I'm really buoyed by the positive results."

Lead researcher Professor Nikolai Petrovsky said the vaccine candidate had been shown to be safe and to induce antibodies that attack the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

"We've had no major side-effects in any of the subjects," said Professor Petrovsky.

He said the vaccine had also shown positive results in trials on animals in the United States in protecting them from COVID-19 infection.

"That makes us more confident that this is actually going to work and that we might have a successful vaccine on our hands," he said.

If the vaccine candidate passes subsequent trials, it could be ready by year's end, he said.

"We can now test the vaccine in nursing home patients and show that it's effective in inducing the right type of immune responses and hopefully, ultimately, show that it's effective in preventing them getting infected," Professor Petrovsky said. "Based on the safety of the vaccine in that [phase one] group, we're now actually going into the elderly, which is very relevant given the problems we're seeing in Victoria."

Vaccine trials coming to aged care homes

The developers of the vaccine are offering their trial to Victorian aged care facilities, where COVID-19 has taken a devastating toll, among other facilities.

"Under our existing approval for our trials, there's no reason those trials can't be extended to Victoria," Professor Petrovsky said. "We would just need to identify sites in Victoria that wanted to be part of the trial."

There have been 94 outbreaks of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in Victorian aged care homes, linked to 61 deaths.

Those who have recovered from COVID-19 are also candidates for the phase two trial — which will also aim to test whether the drug might help prevent reinfection.

If the vaccine candidate also passes phase two, the final phase would involve testing on a large population with a high incidence of COVID-19 transmission overseas.

From there, Professor Petrovsky said, it would require approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration before becoming available for distribution in Australia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-01/s...e/12514988

This thread would be a good place to post information about progress being made in other countries.

 

[PopsnTuff]

Russia plans mass vaccinations by October, doctors and teachers will be first, health officials said....

But the fast pace of production of the adenovirus-based vaccine-- coming just five months after COVID-19 became widespread in Russia-- has given pause to Western experts, who question the adequacy of testing for the drug.

The vaccine is essentially a common cold virus fused with the spike protein of SARS CoV-2 to prompt an immune response.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the U.S., said he hoped that Russia, China and other international competitors racing for a vaccine were "actually testing the vaccine" before administering them to anyone.

Fauci predicts the U.S. will have a "safe and effective" vaccine by the end of this year.....read on.....

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...ll-be-first-health-officials-said/ar-BB17sqKa

 

[StarSong]

Fauci predicts the U.S. will have a "safe and effective" vaccine by the end of this year.....read on.....

Although the article states this, I have never heard Fauci predict this. I've heard him hope this and say he's cautiously optimistic that we'll have one in the US, but not make a prediction. I could be wrong, having not heard everything he's said regarding this virus or a vaccine for it.

 

[fmdog44]

There re several countries and many companies working on this. Distribution of the vaccines is going to take some intelligent planning. The medical workers will be first of course.

 

[911]

On Friday during Fauci’s testimony before Congress, he stated that it ‘may’ be possible to have a vaccine available by the end of this year or early in 2021. Testing is the big item to get through with no consequences such as; bad side effects.

I remember reading when the measles vaccine was being tested by the French at the Pasteur Institute. They had passed every test that was to be used to receive certification. A few months later, some patients started complaining about Tinnitus, but the doctors could not say with 100% certainty that the vaccine was the culprit. Still, their vaccine was rejected due to the uncertainty.

The Pasteur Institute is also working on a COVID-19 vaccine by using the measles vaccine. This type of science amazes me. I read that they are using the measles vaccine as a Trojan Horse to trick the body by somehow making it believe that it is a COVID vaccine. Say what?