Vaccine manufacturer Merck Discontinues Development of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates. The company found that the vaccine shots offered less protection than just contracting the virus itself and developing antibodies.
Should we be worried? How big a setback is this in the vaccine development?
Christer Sundqvist
PhD, Helsinki, Finland
Here is the link to the announcement: https://www.merck.com/news/merck-discontinues-development-of-sars-cov-2-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-continues-development-of-two-investigational-therapeutic-candidates/
Considering that vaccine development is more often than not a high-risk, high-reward business, I think that this news is not really surprising and should not be a cause for worry. I am actually more surprised and amazed that we now have a lot of approved vaccine products for SARS-CoV-2 at this point - even if it is only less than 2 years since the cases of atypical pneumonia now known as COVID-19 was recognized. I think that this is not necessarily a setback to vaccine development, it is simply just a case of a vaccine candidate/lead that did not prove to be clinically effective according to the company. Such outcome is common in vaccine and drug development. As for Merck, it is likely that they already have planned for the chance that this might occur. I applaud Merck for being transparent with their endeavors on SARS-COV-2 vaccine development. Besides, we now have a handful of approved vaccine products and there are other vaccine candidates being pursued.
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