Coronavirus: first come the drugs

Drugs to treat patients with coronavirus will come relatively quickly. Vaccines, however, will take longer, according to a top FDA official. After all, it’s much more time-consuming to craft — and clinically test — a vaccine for a healthy individual than it is to find a drug for a patient who has already fallen ill. 

Several companies are working on such inoculations, led by Moderna Therapeutics, but trials won’t even begin until later this spring. Meanwhile, several medications — including Gilead’s remdesivir — are already showing promise in helping curb the infection. 

“The development of a vaccine is not going to prevent a pandemic here,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told STAT.

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