COVID-19: German company begins human trials of coronavirus vaccine
- There is a fresh hope in the race to get rid of COVID-19 as a German company, BioNTech, has begun testing a potential vaccine on human volunteers
- BioNTech said 12 participants of a clinical trial in Germany received doses of the vaccine since April 23
- The company said it expects to receive regulatory approval to begin trials in the United States soon
The race to get solution for the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic gets intense as a German pharmaceutical company, BioNTech, has started testing a potential vaccine for the new coronavirus on human volunteers.
According to Al Jazeera, BioNTech said on Wednesday, April 29, that 12 participants of a clinical trial in Germany received doses of the vaccine candidate BNT162 since April 23.
Legit.ng gathers that the German company is working with the United States (US)-based company, Pfizer.
Source: UGC
BioNTech said the next step it will take in the vaccine production is to start increasing the dose of BNT162 in a trial involving about 200 participants aged 18 to 55.
The company said it expects to receive regulatory approval to begin trials in the United States soon.
Though there are reports that having a safe, effective vaccine is still more than a year away, researchers are making intense efforts to repurpose existing drugs and non-drug therapies as well as testing promising experimental drugs that were already in clinical trials.
It is reported that there are now as many as 100 potential COVID-19 candidate vaccines under development by researchers around the world.
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Earlier, Legit.ng reported that a European expert, Pasi Penttinen, said that the coronavirus vaccine will not be ready until the end of 2021 under “most optimistic of scenarios".
Speaking with Sky News, Penttinen said that the process of developing a vaccine is a very complicated and expensive one, saying to ascertain its effectiveness, so many human trials would have to be done.
“On top of that, you need to make sure in this kind of situation of your manufacturing capacity, which essentially is sufficient for the whole world.
"Having a one-and-a-half to two-year timeline to get that done is nothing short of a miracle,” he continued.
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Source: Legit.ng