The push to make a coronavirus vaccine is moving at breakneck speed. This week, the first of a few dozen healthy volunteers in Seattle, Washington, received a vaccine in a phase 1 safety trial sponsored by the US government. Similar safety trials of other coronavirus vaccines will also begin soon.
Even as these ‘first in human’ trials get going, key questions about how our immune system fights off the virus — and how to safely trigger a similar immune response with a vaccine — remain unanswered. Answers might come soon from studies of infected people and animal models, but some researchers say that the lack of information should not keep experts from beginning safety trials in people. Others worry that if vaccine candidates released on an accelerated schedule turn out to be ineffective or, worse, unsafe, it could send researchers back to the drawing board and end up delaying the development and wide-scale roll-out of an effective vaccine.
