New Delhi: According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), three vaccines for the coronavirus have been approved to be moved to the human trials stage. There are about 70 vaccines under trial out of which, three, two from China and one from the U.S. have moved to human trials.


A vaccine usually takes 10 to 15 years to develop but considering the urgency medical researchers are trying to develop the vaccine in a year. The Coronavirus has already claimed 1,19,686 lives worldwide which is why there is a need to speed up the whole process.

The farthest along in the clinical process is an experimental vaccine that is being developed by a Hong Kong-based company CanSino Biologics and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. The other two vaccines that are being tested in humans are treatments developed by US drugmakers Moderna Inc. and Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc.

New vaccines are tested in the labs first, then they are tested on animals which are then followed by small tests run on smaller groups of people and then finally on larger groups of people before being sent to the market.

Experts believe that skipping any of these tests can be dangerous and can backfire, while they do know that these vaccines are needed urgently, cutting timelines has many risk factors. In the race, some drugmakers are skipping animal testing phases which is usually what proves the safety of the vaccine.

In India, Ahmedabad based Zydus Cadila Healthcare and Pune-based Serum Institute of India are working on a vaccine for COVID-19.