The entire country -- and the entire world -- is anxiously awaiting the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine. | Stock Photo at Getty Images
The entire country -- and the entire world -- is anxiously awaiting the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine. | Stock Photo at Getty Images
As political leaders and government officials continue to discuss and speculate on both the arrival and impact of a COVID-19 vaccine, those on the front lines of the pandemic in Michigan’s health care industry are slated to be among the first to receive a vaccine being developed with the cooperation of local hospitals.
Dr. Matthew Sims, director of Infectious Diseases Research at Beaumont Health, recently appeared on WJR’s "The Frank Beckmann Show" to discuss the current status in the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Beckmann asked Sims if the development of a vaccine should give people hope that relief from the pandemic is near at hand.
“It’s not around the corner, but it’s at least, you know, visible in the distance maybe,” Sims told Beckmann. “There’s over 100 different vaccines in development right now.”
Sims said that the development of those vaccines varies from just getting started with animal testing to being in the final phase of development.
In the United Kingdom, there is even a debate currently ongoing over the possibility of vaccinating a group of people and intentionally exposing them to COVID-19 to test the effectiveness of a late-stage vaccine, Sims told Beckmann. The concept has raised a number of ethical questions, which are at the heart of the debate.
“What’s more ethical, taking ten months or a year to develop a vaccine by the normal route -- in the middle of a pandemic when millions of people have died? Or do you do a shorter route, where you could do a challenge trial, and really find out, with a smaller number of people, who you are putting at risk, because you are infecting them with the disease? But you put a smaller number at risk in order to get the speed and save a large number of people,” Sims told Beckmann. "It's a very slippery-slope kind of an argument."
In the U.S., such drastic measures are not on the table, but progress is being made, Sims said. Beaumont is not developing the vaccine, but like several hospital systems in the state, is participating in the trials.
“Our plan is to work with these companies on testing them, and we’re still relatively early in it,” he told Beckmann.
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