While efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine have accelerated, there are still safety concerns, according to the director-general of the International Vaccine Institute.
“We don’t know that a vaccine that’s developed in four months — or I guess 12 to 18 months, which is the current estimate — is really safe,” Jerome Kim, director-general of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Monday.
Typically, the process of developing vaccines takes five to 10 years, but Kim said there’s been “unprecedented speed” in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine as a result of global efforts to stem the pandemic and a “significant amount of funding” given to companies to get vaccines ready for testing. As a result, vaccines can now begin human trials in 4 months — instead of the typical five to 10 years — and that’s “really a remarkable thing,” he said.
His comments come after Inovio Pharmaceuticals pushed out Phase 1 of clinical human testing this week,…