Coronavirus Vaccine Trials Get Support From US Govt; Studies On 3 Possible Ones To Be Conducted

The US government is going to fund three key vaccine candidates for coronavirus. These vaccines are going to enter phase 3 of vaccine trials soon.

(Representative Image/ Getty)

New Delhi: The US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has said that the US government is going to fund studies of three experimental coronavirus vaccines. "The coronavirus vaccine effort is progressing very well, and we expect more than one candidate vaccine to be in advanced clinical testing by early summer. This is good news for the overall coronavirus vaccine effort," said Fauci, Director, US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in an interview with CNN. Fauci said in the report that the funding decision came from the Department of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.  He also said that the testing plans are in accordance with the timeline he had suggested earlier: a vaccine at scale by the end of the year or early next year. As coronavirus pandemic continues across the world, most people especially in countries like India where there is a surge in the number of cases are waiting for an effective virus against the coronavirus. There are several research institutes and pharmaceutical companies that are rushing to develop the vaccine. At present, there are reports of three vaccines that will enter phase III of clinical testing- AstraZeneca and Oxford University, US-based Biotech company Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. In Phase 3 vaccine candidate is tested on a large group usually over the age of 18. Also Watch: Will India buy 'Made in China- Covid Vaccine'? One of the earliest vaccines to enter phases II of the trails is the AstraZeneca and Oxford University vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 which is a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) that causes infections in chimpanzees. Apart from this US-based Biotech company Moderna too is entering phase 2 of clinical trials. This is an RNA based vaccine and is being developed in collaboration with the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The US-based multinational company, Johnson & Johnson announced on Wednesday that it will begin human trials of its recombinant vaccine  Ad26.COV2-S in July. The statement by the company says ‘through its Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies (Janssen) it has accelerated the initiation of the Phase 1/2a first-in-human clinical trial of its investigational SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Ad26.COV2-S, recombinant. Initially scheduled to begin in September, the trial is now expected to commence in the second half of July.’ The study will take place in the U.S. and Belgium. Once the results of phase 1 are out, the company is also looking at starting phase 3 ahead of schedule.