Imagine it is the year 2025. The Covid-19 pandemic is now a few years behind us with the whole world having been vaccinated successfully. Life is returning to normal, even as global travel has not quite returned to pre-2020 levels.
And then imagine that in January of 2025 news emerges of a novel coronavirus outbreak in Uganda. Within weeks it becomes clear that the new virus, previously not found in humans, is spreading rapidly, and may have a case fatality rate that is higher than that of Covid-19. The world starts bracing for a new pandemic.
Meanwhile, scientists announce that they have, using the widely available viral sequence, created an mRNA vaccine that they believe will be safe in humans, and efficacious. We can have phase 1 and phase 2 safety trials completed by May. A large-scale, phase 3 effectiveness trial, enrolling tens of thousands of volunteers, will deliver results by December 2025.
Read the full post on The Turning Point.