Germany's health minister expects there to be a coronavirus vaccine in the coming months and 'certainly' next year

• Germany's health minister says there will "certainly" be a coronavirus vaccine "in the next year."
• Jens Spahn said he was "optimistic" that a vaccine would be developed in the coming months.
• He did not specify which vaccine he believed would prove safe and effective and added that it was not yet possible to know how long any such treatment would offer immunity against Covid-19 for.
• More than 100 vaccines around the world are currently in development.
• Russia's government this week gave regulatory approval to one developed in Moscow, despite concerns it has not completed the final stages of testing.

Germany's health minister believes there will "certainly" be a widely-available coronavirus vaccine in the next year and is "optimistic" that one will be developed in the coming months.

"I'm optimistic that in the next months, and certainly in the next year, there can be a vaccine," Jens Spahn told German broadcaster ZDF on Thursday, in comments reported by Reuters.

He did not specify which vaccine he believed would prove safe and effective and added that it was not yet possible to know how long any such treatment would offer immunity against COVID-19 for.

Spahn said: "But one thing we can say is that thanks to us all working together — researchers, scientists, the public — we will probably have a vaccine faster than ever before in the history of humanity."

More than 100 vaccines around the world are currently in development, according to the BBC.

Vladimir Putin's Russia's government this week gave regulatory approval to one developed in Moscow, despite concerns it has not completed the final stages of testing.

Spahn warned this week that Russia's vaccine was potentially "dangerous" because it had not been fully tested and could undermine confidence in the concept of vaccinations if it "goes wrong."

Researchers working on a vaccine at the UK's Oxford University are considered to be leading the race to produce a fully tested vaccine and have agreed with drugs giant AstraZeneca to produce up to 2 billion doses.

The team, led by Dr Sarah Gilbert, began human trials for the vaccine in April, at which point she said a vaccine could be ready by as early as September, although that timeframe now appears unlikely.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has urged caution about Oxford's front-running status, reflecting the fact that the majority of vaccines fail to receive regulatory approval.

"You've got to be careful if you're temporarily leading the way vs. having a vaccine that's actually going to work," he told the BBC, in comments reported by Bloomberg.

The Robert Koch Institute, Germany's leading infectious disease institute, this week issued a statement saying that a vaccine against Covid-19 could be ready by the autumn of this year, but subsequently retracted it, saying the information was out of date,according to Reuters.