LONDON: With the Coronavirus pandemic causing panic all over the world claiming lives of nearly 6 million people globally, the world is waiting impatiently for the good news of discovering vaccination against the pandemic.

According to reports, more than 13.9 million people are found coronavirus positive out of which nearly 6 million are dead by it globally.

Although 8,285,183 people have recovered from COVID-19 pandemic, there are still 5,075,383 active cases out of which 1% or 59,900 are in serious or critical condition.

Why is a coronavirus vaccine important?

The coronavirus pandemic has spread all over the world making majority of world population vulnerable.

The world, though individual nations enforced locally, saw a hard time caused by the lockdown; hence, the vaccine can help life return to normalcy as the measures imposed to end it’s capacity of spreading very fast can be waived off.

What sort of progress is being made?

Research is intensified globally at breakneck speed and about 200 groups around the world are working on vaccines and 18 are now being tested on people in clinical trials.

The first human trial data appears positive showing the first eight patients all produced antibodies that could neutralize the virus.

A group in China showed a vaccine was safe and led to protective antibodies being made. It is being made available to the Chinese military.

In Oxford, the first human trial in Europe has started with more than 800 recruits and has signed a deal with AstraZeneca to supply 100 million doses (30 million for the UK) if it works.

And completely new approaches to vaccine development are in human trials.

However, no-one knows how effective any of these vaccines will be.

When will we have a coronavirus vaccine?

A vaccine would normally take years, if not decades, to develop. Researchers hope to achieve the same amount of work in only a few months.

Most experts think a vaccine is likely to become widely available by mid-2021, about 12-18 months after the new virus, known officially as Sars-CoV-2, first emerged.

That would be a huge scientific feat and there are no guarantees it will work.

Four coronaviruses already circulate in human beings. They cause common cold symptoms and we don’t have vaccines for any of them.

(Based on BBC news and data from other agencies)