News03/26/2020

What Will it Take to Develop a Vaccine for COVID-19?

This week, the National Institutes of Health announced that Kaiser Permanente has begun the first clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine, called mRNA-1273. Scientists estimate that it will take at least one year to make a COVID-19 vaccine available to the general public.

To understand the steps required to develop, test, and produce a COVID-19 vaccine, Sarah LaFave, a PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, spoke with Ruth Karron, a professor in the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Karron is the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Vaccine Initiative and director of the Center for Immunization Research. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Read the interview in its entirety on JHU HUB.