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Vaccine for COVID-19 not likely before end of year

Calling it “our generation’s moon shot,” medical experts with UPMC Pittsburgh Tuesday said a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 before the end of the year would not likely be discovered and distributed.

“It is our generation’s moon shot,” said Dr. Graham Snyder, medical director of Infection Prevention and Hospital Epidemiology for UPMC.

Snyder was joined in a news conference by Drs. Donald Yealy, senior medical director and chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, UPMC and University of Pittsburgh, and David A. Nace, chief medical officer, UPMC Senior Communications.

Each expressed hope about a vaccine to be discovered and distributed but said the chances were nil one would be developed before 2021.

“Rolling out a vaccine, proven to be safe, which helps to improve the immune system and reduce chance of the disease, would be unprecedented,” Nace said.

“We’re not content to see what the future holds,” Yealy said.

UPMC has developed its own test, using nasal swabs and did not wait for government or industry to do the work.

Instead, Yealy said, through adaptive and platform clinical trials, UPMC helped sick patients before results went to the peer review stage.

Before COVID-19 pandemic, a hypothetical pandemic tested UPMC ability to do mass influence vaccinations of its healthcare workers, Yealy said.

Today, optimism abounds with a recently discovered drug consisting of antibodies that kill the virus.

Work continues by Steven Shapiro, UPMC chief medical and scientific officer; John Mellors, UPMC and University of Pittsburgh chief of infectious diseases and his colleague Dimiter Dimitrov, Pitt’s director for antibody therapeutics.

The “human monoclonal antibodies” are able to prevent and treat COVID-19 in different ways but are not perfected for use.

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