The deadly novel Coronavirus has killed over 3,000 people in China and caused 267 deaths across the globe. It should be mentioned that COVID-19, which infected more than 95,000 people in the world still has no vaccine available but scientists recently revealed that there was a possible cure of the virus but the clinical trial never happened.
After the claims were made, an expert testified before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee as health officials. It was confirmed that there are at least 160 cases of novel Coronavirus in about 17 states across the US.
Coronavirus vaccine
A few days ago Israeli scientists at MIGAL stated that they have already created a vaccine against avian Coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV), while, Israeli Minister of Science and Technology Ofir Akunis said a Coronavirus vaccine would be ready in three weeks and available within 90 days. But after making the claim, no updates were received from the scientists and the Israel officials about the availability of the much-awaited vaccine.
Meanwhile, a team of scientists told the US Congress on Thursday, March 6, that they had created a vaccine which may prevent the deadly Coronavirus outbreak. But the vaccine never made it to the testing due to lack of funding.
Who is Dr Peter Hotez?
The co-director of the Centre for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital, Dr Peter Hotez testified before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and said that "We had the vaccine ready to go."
As reported by Independent, Dr Hotez told the lawmakers about the vaccine his team had developed to protect against a strain of Coronavirus in 2016. But it was revealed that at that time nobody cared and found anything interesting about the Coronavirus vaccine.
The 61-year-old American scientist told the US lawmakers that the vaccine was created to respond against SARS. He said it may provide the patients with cross-protection from new Coronavirus. Dr Hotez explained that the team of scientists tried to secure funding from investors in order to move the vaccine into the clinical trials but agencies were not interested enough to prevent such outbreak, as SARS got over almost a decade ago.
Novel Coronavirus vaccine
While testifying, Dr Hotez also stated that when the Chinese authority started putting up the data on bio-archive in January and February, his team of scientists noticed a very close homology between the SARS and COVID-19 and "realized that we may be sitting on very attractive Coronavirus vaccines."
In addition, he said that now they again try to get the finding but now "We will have the lag." As per Dr Hotez, the new Coronavirus vaccine trials would take time. He added, "Unfortunately some of my colleagues in the biotech industry are making this inflated claims about vaccines coming in weeks."
While revealing the truth behind the availability of COVID-19 vaccine the scientist stated that the process to manufacture and distribute a vaccine to combat the new Coronavirus will take time much longer than some experts have estimated. He said that the approach to try and start using the vaccine should be slow and experts should carry out the process very cautiously.
On Thursday, March 5, he was also joined by a panel of infectious disease experts and warned of the "unique potential safety problems" during the testing of the Coronavirus vaccines. He also said that "It's tragic that we won't have a vaccine ready for this epidemic," and the "current situation indicates that we'll be fighting these outbreaks with one hand tied behind our backs."
