The search is well under way for a vaccine against the coronavirus that could prove a route out of the current crisis. Despite scientists such as Jonathan Heeney in Cambridge working all hours to develop an effective drug, however, we are still likely to be at least a year off from a mass immunisation programme. The Guardian writer Samanth Subramanian has been following scientists’ progress over the past three months from when they sequenced the virus’s genome within days of it emerging to human vaccination trials that are already taking place. He tells Rachel Humphreys there is a lot of work to do to bring a vaccine to market. Plus: we hear from Lydia, who is about to be screened as a possible subject for the human vaccine trials about to begin in Oxford. She says the crisis has made her re-evaluate her attitude towards risk.
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