TRUE: Developing a COVID-19 vaccine could take KSh100 billion and 7 years
A Facebook post claiming that the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) would need Ksh100 billion and seven years to develop a vaccine against coronavirus is TRUE.
The post adds that developing a new vaccine is a lengthy and laborious process, and that Kemri had begun the process of building a COVID-19 candidate vaccine prototype.
Kemri’s head of corporate affairs, Davies Mkoji, confirmed to PesaCheck in a phone interview that the claim is true.
Mr Mkoji added that Kemri is in the process of developing its COVID-19 vaccine and the researchers involved have suggested that developing a vaccine successfully could be a costly and laborious exercise, given the fact that the disease is new, and the process itself needs to be done iteratively.
“Manufacturing a vaccine from scratch that could be widely used by people of different genetic makeup could take several years of trials before it is commercially viable,” he said.
A study published by the World Health Organization corroborates Kemri’s sentiments. It says that “for many of the newest vaccines, manufacturers will invest many years and several hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The WHO study adds that some vaccines take longer to develop than others, and some vaccine trials are more expensive than others.
An article on History of Vaccines — an educational resource by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, says that many new vaccines take 10–15 years to develop.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccines go through three different phases of trials. During Phase I, small groups of people receive the trial vaccine to determine the general safety of the drug.
In Phase II, the clinical study group is expanded and the vaccine given to people with different characteristics (such as age and physical health), similar to those for whom the new vaccine is intended.
In the final phase, the vaccine is given to thousands of people and tested for efficacy and safety. The trials are randomized, and patients are grouped — there is usually a control group and one or more other groups for comparison.
PesaCheck has looked into the claim that it could take up to Ksh100 billion and seven years to develop a vaccine from scratch and finds it to be TRUE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker James Okong’o and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Enock Nyariki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is a joint initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with additional funding support from the International Budget Partnership (Kenya) and Twaweza, in partnership with a coalition of local media organisations, and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).