Covid-19 coronavirus infections are skyrocketing: the number of reported cases in China increased by 15.000 yesterday alone. The new method of assessment has led to infections that are now over 64.000 with more than 1.360 people dying from the virus.
An American biotechnology company, the Inovio Pharmaceutical, claims to have created a coronavirus vaccine three hours after gaining access to the virus's genetic sequence in mid-January, and now the team is racing to bring the vaccine to market in record time.
Inovio Pharmaceuticals is based in Pennsylvania, but the discovery would have been made in one of its laboratories in San Diego.
The news of a vaccine against the coronavirus is incredible considering the widespread information, according to which the production time would be 12-18 months. The forecast initially circulated led to April being the month of the release of a remedy, then the news became confusing. Once the game is over, once the emergency is over, we will have to reflect on the activity of the media, which is showing many shortcomings during this epidemic.
“We were able to rapidly build our vaccine in about three hours once we obtained the DNA sequence from the virus because of the power of our DNA medicine platform”, Dr. J. Joseph Kim, president and CEO of Inovio. “Our goal is to begin phase one human trials in the United States early this summer.”
The surge in the stock market
The news did not go unnoticed: Inovio shares rose to $5,32 after the announcement relaunched by CBS News.
The American company is partnering with Beijing Advaccine, a Chinese company, to work on the vaccine. Inovio received $ 9 million to work on the vaccine from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an association supported by the billionaire Bill Gates.
“We've done this many, many times before. The most relevant was our vaccine against the MERS virus, which is a coronavirus from the same family as Covid-19,” he said Kim.
Inovio took a Zika virus vaccine from design to human testing in the United States in less than seven months.
“We are planning to break our record,” he said. “We hope to do it in half the time.”
Inovio is building a coalition for the "war" on Covid-19 that will require the production of millions of doses, he said Kim.
Also another US company, the novavax Maryland-based, which has already produced an Ebola vaccine in 90 days, aims to complete a coronavirus vaccine in just three months.