COVID-19: German vaccine set for human testing

— As Swiss scientist conducts successful tests; mulls mass immunization

A possible vaccine for Coronavirus, developed by German firm BioNTech and US drug giant Pfizer, has been given the green light for human testing.

The trial will begin with 200 healthy people, aged between 18 and 55, being given the vaccine, according to BBC.

“This is a good sign that the development of a vaccine in Germany is so progressed that we can start with the first studies,” the country’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said Wednesday.

“At the same time the advice remains important that it will take months. This is an injection in the body. Safety first is the guideline for such a vaccine.”

Only a handful of vaccine candidates have been approved for clinical testing on humans globally, and experts caution that it will take at least a year for a viable vaccine to be developed.

Scientists at the UK’s Oxford University are starting human trials of a possible vaccine this week. Other clinical trials are taking place in the US and China.

In a related development, mass immunisation with a newly developed vaccine against the coronavirus disease could start in Switzerland in October, according to immunologist Martin Bachmann.

The national regulatory body Swissmedic confirmed that it was in talks with scientists including Bachmann, who works at the Bern University Hospital.

“The time schedule is extremely optimistic, but it is not totally far-fetched,” Swissmedic spokesman Lukas Jaggi told dpa this week.

“Given the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic, we are talking about weeks, not months of approval procedures,” he added.

If the vaccine meets all requirements, a decision to green-light it could come before the end of the year, according to the spokesman.

Bachmann told journalists that he has already conducted successful tests using mice.

Bachmann used the gene sequence of the Sars-CoV-2 virus that China published in January to isolate proteins that allow the virus to latch on to human cells.

He then used this genetic sequence to build a type of dummy virus that does not make people ill, but that triggers an immune reaction that allows the body to fend off the real virus.

Chinese and Latvian partners are involved in the vaccine project.