The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Scientist: One million vaccine doses to be ready by year’s end
Dunfermline-born researcher and team working around the clock to develop lifesaving jab to combat spread of disease
A scientist working on a coronavirus vaccine has said one million doses will be available by the end of the year.
Dunfermline-born Dr Kate Broderick, 42, has been working around the clock with a team of researchers to develop a life-saving jab in six months.
First responders, medical staff and people with underlying medical conditions will be given the vaccines as a priority, according to Dr Broderick.
And she said after the initial doses are made available the plan is to ramp-up production and get 50 to 100 million jabs released worldwide during 2021.
Dr Broderick works at pharmaceutical giant Inovio in San Diego, California, and confirmed the Bill Gates Foundation donated $5 million to aid the development of the drugs.
The team at Inovio are already three months ahead of schedule, having carried out successful tests on animals, including rabbits, guinea pigs and primates.
Dr Broderick said: “We’ll have a million doses and even though that sounds a lot, it’s really not that many when you spread it out over everybody who wants it – so that’s a start.
“Then over the next six months to a year following that, we’d really scale up the manufacture so we had 50 to 100 million doses.
“It would primarily go to first responders, medical personnel and then also potentially people with other health conditions.
“It’s hard to work out a costing structure for the vaccine until we know where we are in terms of epidemiology.”
Dr Broderick studied at Glasgow University before doing post-doctoral research at the University of California.
She praised the efforts taken by Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government, saying they were “completely right” in the course of action taken so far.
She said: “Herd immunity is a really important part of this process but we’re not going to get herd immunity until we have a vaccine.
“We’re nowhere close to having anything like that at the moment.
“There’s a critical mass of the population who are protected and this percentage differs depending on the virus to be considered a herd immunity.
“The vaccine would provide immunity and the others who aren’t immune would be somehow protected because there would be less cases of the coronavirus in society.”
Dr Broderick has previously helped create successful vaccines for ebola, zika, lassa fever and Mers (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome).
Despite hopes of a vaccine being developed this year, she warned of coronavirus potentially mutating or disappearing and coming back.
She added: “It’s possible that it (coronavirus) will go away over the next few months but it could come back and again it comes down to the fact that we’ve just no idea what’s going to happen to this virus.
“A virus can mutate, it can change – it could just disappear and we’ll never, ever see it again.
“That’s a possibility but I wouldn’t rely on any of those things as we’ve just no idea.
“I knew it was going to be bad – every school here in San Diego is shut, the shops are empty and there’s no food on any of the shelves – it’s just crazy.
“I’m sure nobody has experienced anything like this in their whole lives and likely never will again.
“Some people are being told to work from home but it’s not like I can do that – so it’s really difficult.”
“I’m sure nobody has experienced anything like this in their whole lives. DR KATE BRODERICK