Coronavirus vaccine ‘might not come to fruition’: British PM

LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said there might never be a vaccine for COVID-19 despite the huge global effort to develop one.

Johnson, who was hospitalised last month after contracting the new coronavirus, speculated that a vaccine may not be developed at all, despite the huge global effort to produce one.

Johnson wrote in a newspaper “there remains a very long way to go, and I must be frank that a vaccine might not come to fruition”. He said that there is a need to find new ways to control the virus including testing people who have symptoms and tracing contacts of those infected people.

The British government is giving 93 million pounds in funding to speed up the opening of the new Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre. Johnson said the UK is also supporting research into drug treatments to help people recover quickly from the virus.

Business Secretary Alok Sharma said the UK was one of the world’s frontrunners to develop a vaccine. He said the projects at Oxford University and Imperial College London were making good progress at unprecedented speed but warned there are no certainties. “We may never find a successful coronavirus vaccine,” he said.

The British government relaxed some restrictions on outdoor activities in England last week and plans to continue easing rules over the next few months.

Governments worldwide are struggling to restart economies affected by the pandemic. In the 36 million newly unemployed in the United States alone, economic pressures are building even as authorities acknowledge that reopening risks setting off new waves of infections and deaths.

Coronavirus has infected 4.6 million people and killed more than 312,000 worldwide, a tally that undercounts the true toll of the pandemic. The US has reported 88,000 dead and Europe has seen at least 160,000 deaths.

In the US, many states have lifted stay-at-home orders and other restrictions allowing some types of businesses to reopen. China’s commercial hub of Shanghai announced a June 2 restart of classes for younger students amid falling virus cases.

China’s airline regulator reported that flights had returned to 60 percent of pre-outbreak levels, exceeding 10,000 per day for the first time since February 1. There have been no new deaths reported in a month and just five new cases on Sunday.