It seems that the current strategies have only slowed the spread of Covid-19 and the the only way we are truly going to end the current Coronavirus outbreak is by developing a vaccine but that is usually a long process but the World Health Organisation have said that there are 35 companies and academic institutions racing to create such a vaccine with at least four to be shortly entering human trials imminently to look at all the possible ways a vaccine might inadvertently harm people, when it is supposed to be protecting them.
China sequenced and shared the genetic material of the virus in early January which allowed research groups around the world to grow the live virus and study how it invades human cells and makes people sick and as it is a Coronavirus which is a family of viruses that cause disease in animals and have made the jump to humans, we already have research into them.
Sars-Cov- 2 or Covid 19 shares much of its genetic material with the virus that caused SARS and MERS and work began on vaccines for these and those are now being repurposed for Sars-CoV-2.
Annelies Wilder-Smith, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that there is a push to do things as fast as possible but they cannot take shortcuts and any vaccine will need to go through stringent tests which normally takes a decade or more and said that even without any hitches, the vaccine is at least 18 months away.
'The pandemic' says Wilder-Smith ominously, 'will probably have peaked and declined before a vaccine is available' so for now, the advice seems to be keep washing your hands.
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