FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany’s leading infectious disease institute said on Wednesday a first vaccine against the coronavirus could be available as early as autumn but warned that it may take longer to control the pandemic.
“Preliminary projections make the availability of one or several vaccines seem possible by autumn 2020,” the Robert Koch Institute said in a statement on its website, citing a global effort to bring immunisations to market.
“It would be dangerous at this point to trust that a vaccination from autumn 2020 can control the pandemic,” it cautioned.
The impact of any vaccine could be tempered by viral mutations or by the resulting immunity only lasting a short time immunity, the institute added.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, editing by Thomas Escritt)
