'Over a year' for COVID-19 vaccine, says GlobalData

Industry analyst GlobalData says that a vaccine for COVID-19, which has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), will likely take over a year to be developed.

While a year may be considered lengthy for countries suffering extreme economic upheaval, it is much more rapid than conventional timescales, and represents an unprecedented reaction across the industry.

US biotech Moderna (Nasdaq: MRNA) has announced that the first participant has already been dosed in a Phase I study of its mRNA vaccine, mRNA-1273. That trial is being conducted by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).