There are about 150 different companies across the world that have SARS-CoV-2 candidate vaccines. These are distributed into different types. It seems mRNA vaccines and subunit vaccines are the ones people are working on.
It is extremely complicated to make a vaccine, because it's a biologic. Usually, we're looking at 10 to 15 years, as I'm sure you well know, but now we're trying to cram that into approximately one to two years.
Many of the companies have moved very quickly, because they have had previous platforms for different types of viruses, whether it be Ebola or influenza virus vaccines. Those are the ones that are jumping ahead. Most likely, we will see a vaccine within the next year to two years. The question is always, “Is it safe, and is it efficacious?” This is where we must continue to do substantial phase one, phase two and phase three trials. If they work, they'll be ready to come to Canada.
We have to understand that we are dealing with infectious diseases. Although we talk about infectious disease and vaccines hand in hand, some infectious diseases are very amenable to vaccine production, and some are much more difficult. We're dealing with coronavirus, which sits in the middle. It's not HIV, which is very difficult for vaccine development, but it's going to be challenging.