Field : Life Science

Topic : The Challenges to Create Immediate Vaccine of COVID-19

Main Challenges in Developing COVID-19 Vaccine

A coronavirus is a group of viruses that caused some diseases to animals

and humans. Several types of coronavirus are known to cause respiratory
infections to humans, from cough, cold, to even more serious diseases such as
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS). Recently, there’s a new type of coronavirus has been found
that caused the COVID-19 disease. COVID-19 itself is a contagious disease
caused by a newly found type of coronavirus. COVID-19 has become a pandemic
all over the world. COVID-19 is transmitted through respiratory droplets from
people infected by the COVID-19 when coughing, sneezing, or even talking.
These droplets can stick to the surface of objects such as a table or door handle,
and people can be infected if they touch the surface of objects, then touch their
eyes, nose or mouth. This virus can be killed with soap or alcohol-based sanitizer
if clean water not available. To day, COVID-19 vaccine has not been found,
although this disease has killed more than 600.000 people all over the world.

Another challenge faced by the vaccine developer is to test the candidate

therapies. Vaccine candidates that have been qualified for the phase I safety test
and phase II dosage trials could be applied to the volunteers and challenged with
the virus as a part of the phase IIb trial. This step is required to see how well the
vaccine will protect them, compared to the pacebo or a suitable alternative. The
promising vaccine candidates finally have to be put on a large-scale test in a high-
risk community, but the process of assessing the vaccine candidates before phase
III trials can be substantially accelerated by the challenge studies. Although it’s
hard, it’s not possible to predict the exact estimation about how much time can be
saved in developing the vaccine of COVID-19 through the challenge test. The
challenge test itself will be taking time to be established, including the production
of another version of the virus which can be used in related research. Similar to
the other vaccine efforts, there’s a possibility that challenge studies would not
have effective intervention results.

While running the tests, other challenges have to be faced considering the
aspects that influence the target of the test, such as ethic codes, values, and
necessity. Challenge studies create a high-risk situation for the participants and
people all over the world. To date, no medication is scientifically proven to be
effective for COVID-19 treatment. US and Japan were authorizing the emergency
usage for Remdesivir, then followed by other countries, its basic clinical proof
that underlies its effectivity is still limited and doesn’t show a significant mortal
rate decrease. Some experts said that challenge studies are not suitable for any
potentially fatal disease that lacks effective treatment. There’s also a clear age
effect, with a much lower mortality rate in a younger individual. In French,
individuals age 20-29 are predicted to have an infected fatality ratio of about
0.007%, which comparable to the annual risk of dying in a traffic accident.
COVID-19 challenge studies might be recruiting the younger volunteers to
minimize the risk of having harmful results. The results in these populations
might not be generalized for the older individual and they have the most profitable
comorbidity from the effective vaccine. This kind of approach can accelerate the
promising vaccine candidate development to the phase III trial in a high-risk
community. A tight observation with the severe side effects in the challenge
studies also increases a faster medication possibility. This will helps to decrease
the dangerous risk compared to community transmission, in which the lack of
relevant symptoms detection will lead to some delay in hospitalization.

In conclusion, the process to create immediate COVID-19 vaccine faced

several challenges, learning the progression of the clinical studies which have to
observe several aspects, testing the candidate therapies which include challenge
studies, and a complicated regulation of ethic codes. We all hope that future
research can be done ethically without lowering the scientific and ethical
standards, and they deserve serious consideration, considering the number of
cases has not decreased.