The Chief of Staff at Windsor Regional Hospital believes a COVID-19 vaccine is still "quite a bit away" but is encouraged by the work that's being done to get there.
Reacting to a recent study and trial of a coronavirus vaccine, Dr. Wassim Saad says there is cautious optimism because the study was done in what he describes as relatively young patients.
"They were between the ages of I believe 18 to 55, so it wasn't really tested in the high-risk population and the older patients," he says. "And just because we develop an anti-body response in the blood test, doesn't necessarily mean it,s going to protect you in real life against coronavirus."
According to Dr. Saad, work in labs is being fast-tracked and he says in some labs, working on a COVID-19 vaccine is all that's being done.
"The last estimate I saw was over $1-billion being put into vaccine development," he says. "There were over 30 different companies that were bidding for different vaccines and I think the most promising ones are down to about eight."
Dr. Saad says no matter how much money is pumped into something, time, is still something you can't control.
"Patients being lost to follow up, allowing enough time for the human body to make those antibodies so you can test them. I mean, you can throw a trillion dollars at something but if you have to wait for somebody to be exposed to a virus and then test antibody levels and then see if they get infected over a long enough period of time, still take just that, time,” says Dr. Saad.
Scientists will soon begin a 30,000-person study to see if a drug developed by Moderna and the U.S. National Institutes of Health is strong enough to protect against COVID-19.
Nearly two-dozen possible vaccines are in various stages of testing around the world.