Vaccine against Covid-19 at least a year away, says EU agency

The European Medicines Agency said in a statement it “estimates that it might take at least one year before a vaccine against COVID-19 is ready for approval and available in sufficient quantities to enable widespread use”.

It will be at least another year before a vaccine against the new coronavirus will be ready for approval and available in sufficient quantities, the EU medicines agency said Tuesday.

A researcher works on virus replication in order to development a vaccine against the coronavirus Covid-19, in Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, on March 26, 2020. - (AFP)

As the number of declared coronavirus cases worldwide passed 800,000 on Tuesday, according to an AFP tally, the race is on to develop a vaccine against COVID-19 which emerged from China late last year.

The European Medicines Agency said in a statement it “estimates that it might take at least one year before a vaccine against COVID-19 is ready for approval and available in sufficient quantities to enable widespread use”.

This was based on current available information and past experience with vaccine development time frames, the Amsterdam-based agency said.

It added that two vaccines have already entered a first phase of a clinical trials that was carried out on healthy volunteers.

But in general “timelines for the development of medicinal products are difficult to predict”, the EMA said.