SAN DIEGO — People have a lot of questions about a potential vaccine for COVID-19. News 8 sat down for a question-and-answer session via Zoom with Dr. Dennis Burton, a professor of immunology and microbiology with Scripps Research in La Jolla.
Are you optimistic a COVID-19 vaccine will be developed?
“I would be relatively optimistic. I don’t think this is the most difficult virus out there. I think we will develop a vaccine,” said Dr. Burton.
Will a vaccine be effective against COVID-19?
“The current vaccine candidates in the very early trials and very preliminary results do seem to induce the sort of immune responses that would be expected to provide some level of protection against the virus,” Burton said.
When will a COVID-19 vaccine be available?
“Sometime probably [in the] late fall, we'll know more if the vaccines currently being tried are looking successful. And, then one would need large scale production; that's going to take longer. So, sometime maybe middle or end of next year I would think large scale vaccines would be available,” Burton said.
How long will a vaccine be effective in fighting off COVID-19?
“I think we do not know yet. We're not far enough into looking at the immune responses, and that's going to be one of the important observations that still needs to be made,” he said.
Can a virus become vaccine-resistant?
“It's possible. I wouldn't say more than that. If you treat with an antibody, for example, and you vaccinate folks and they don't get fully protected, then there's a chance that you will select for viruses that are resistant to the immune response. That resistant virus would then start to spread,” Burton said.
Will the COVID-19 vaccine be safe?
“I don’t think that there should be safety issues. If there are any indications of safety issues with one of these vaccines, then there will be a rethink, no doubt about it. One advantage of having multiple vaccines out there is that you're not wholly reliant on one of them being effective,” he said.
Will there be side effects to the vaccine?
“There are different sorts of side effects. One side effect would be that when you're given the vaccine, you get various side effects like not feeling so well, or like fever, usually quite minor,” Burton said. “There are possibilities of vaccines even enhancing certain types of infection but that’s very rare. I don't think that's going to happen here, but out of an abundance of caution, one needs to look at a large number of people and make sure that that does not happen.”
Will a vaccine get life back to normal?
“Definitely, I think that's, most likely, what will happen. I think the time scale of it is difficult to judge and this is a new pathogen and nature throws up surprises. So, we have to constantly look at what happens and then act accordingly and modify what we're doing,” Burton said.