Why is this virus so tough to beat? How far away is a vaccine at this stage – and why is it such a lengthy and complex process to create one

Why is this virus so tough to beat? How far away is a vaccine at this stage – and why is it such a lengthy and complex process to create one

Traditional methods of vaccine production for viruses often rely on making large amounts of the virus in a lab, and then inactivating it, so it’s not infective, and using it to make a vaccine.

Using these methods of vaccine production takes many, many months.

This is how we make vaccines for influenza at the moment. As we already know a lot about flu, we can predict a year ahead what might be going to happen across the world. We can develop vaccines accordingly and have them ready each year in advance.

This approach is obviously not possible with a virus with so many new features such as Covid-19, so scientists have to start from scratch.

Efforts are well under way. Scientists are using traditional methods and are hopeful these will yield a vaccine. But it may take a year to create one that’s shown to be safe, and of which there is enough for a lot of people.

But really, we need something much sooner, and there is hope for this. New scientific techniques are being used to develop vaccines worldwide at a speed never seen before. This uses all of the scientific knowledge our societies have invested in over many years.