Director of the Biological Institute in Nes Ziona, Professor Shmuel Shapira, forecast this past Monday that an Israeli vaccine against Covid-Corona would be ready by the end of next summer. The target date of "July 2021 is a reasonable approximation," he noted several days before the beginning of clinical experiments of the vaccine in Israel.
"This is a joyous day; we have come a long way," he said, revealing that the institute began working on the project on the 7th of Shevat 5780, per directive of the Prime Minister to develop both an inoculation and antibody treatment. "We have traversed a complex scientific road as well as a difficult regulatory way, working with two separate authorities, Israeli and German. There were no available shortcuts."
He forecast that a vaccine would be accessible by the end of next summer. "I believe that it will be an efficient, good and safe vaccine. One vaccine already exists but we hope that within the next nine months, after experimentation on people, and if all goes well, it will be ready [for public use] even sooner than the end of next summer."
It will be remembered that the Defense Ministry, the Institute for Biological Research and the Health Ministry, announced at the beginning of this week their approval for beginning the stage of clinical experiment on people. Over 25,000 doses have been produced in the Biological Institute for this stage, a very vital and critical phase in the development of a vaccine against Corona which will commence this coming Sunday Nov. 1-16 Cheshvan.
The Institute has taken an approved vaccine platform known as VSV and, using genetic engineering, has replaced the VSV spikes with Covid-Sars spikes for vaccination. Thus, when a person is injected with the VSV spiked virus, immunologically it appears to the body as the Covid virus -- except that it does not cause disease. Nonetheless since it is alien to the body, the immunological system creates antibodies to fight it. If that body is later infected with real Covid viruses, it is ready to fight them. That is the theory which has been shown to work in animal models. Now it must be proven in real volunteers. With the help of the Rofei kol bossor, it looks like it may work.
Explaining how the vaccination virus was constructed
