Explainer: When will a Covid-19 vaccine be ready?

Around the world, politicians, drugmakers and regulators offer contradictory outlooks on when a Covid-19 vaccine will be ready. Much depends on what ‘ready’ means and for what group of people.

Some key questions around the timeline are:

When will we know a vaccine works? More than half a dozen drugmakers around the world are conducting advanced clinical trials, each with tens of thousands of participants, and several expect to know if their Covid-19 vaccines work and are safe by the end of this year.

The most optimistic timeline comes from AstraZeneca Plc, which is running a study in Britain that it says could be completed as early as August.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, said last week that a trial by Moderna Inc could produce decisive results by November or December. Others will come later, some much later.

But some experts are skeptical that the trials, which must study potential side effects on different types of people, can be completed that quickly.

When will the first shots be ready? Several drugmakers are building manufacturing capacity so they can begin production as soon as vaccines are approved by regulators. Some efforts are backed by a US government program called ‘Operation Warp Speed’.

Fauci expects “tens of millions” of doses to be available in early 2021, and that by the end of the year there could be more than a billion.

Several companies say they each expect to make more than 1 billion doses next year. That could mean several billion available by the end of 2021.

When can I get it? First supplies late this year or early next would likely go to those in rich nations who are deemed by governments to work in essential industries or who are at greatest risk from the virus. That is likely to include people with other issues such as diabetes, healthcare workers, and members of the military.

Countries including Canada, Japan, Britain, and the United States have locked in deals putting their citizens first in line for inoculations as they become broadly available during 2021.

When will the world be inoculated? The wait time for Covid-19 vaccines will likely be longer for people in developing countries, which don’t have early supply deals. Some countries may struggle to pay for vaccines.

And what about Russia’s vaccine? Russia has become the first country in the world to grant regulatory approval to a Covid-19 vaccine after less than two months of human testing.

The vaccine still has to complete final trials, raising concerns among some experts at the speed of its approval. Still, Russian business conglomerate Sistema has said it expects to put it into mass production by the end of the year.

– Reuters