- At a White House meeting about COVID-19, the president asked if the flu vaccine could be used to prevent coronavirus.
- "No," a biotech CEO told the president.
- While a new flu vaccine is developed two times each year, it is developed to target specific strands of the flu and would be ineffective in fighting COVID-19.
- Experts say a coronavirus vaccine is likely years away.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
President Donald Trump on Monday asked whether the flu vaccine would be useful in fighting the coronavirus during a meeting with pharmaceutical executives and members of his administration's Coronavirus Task Force.
His question came after Leonard Schleifer, the CEO of biotechnology company Regeneron, said at the White House meeting that millions of people were vaccinated for the flu, but that no one had yet been vaccinated for COVID-19, The Independent reported.
"But the same vaccine could not work?" Trump asked. "You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that would have an impact - or much of an impact - on corona?"
"No," Schleifer replied.
"Probably not," added Dr. Tony Fauci, the director of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Disease, and member of Trump's taskforce.
The flu vaccine would not work to fight COVID-19 because it's designed to target specific strains of influenza
According to Johns Hopkins, while influenza and COVID-19 are both respiratory illnesses that involve similar symptoms, the two viruses have major differences. For one, the flu is caused by several different viruses and strains, whereas the novel coronavirus outbreak is linked to one specific virus, now called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2.
Here's how the flu vaccine is made: Twice each year - in February and September - the directors of health organizations from the US, UK, Australia, China, and Japan come together with the World Health Organization Collaborating Centers to select which viruses are targeted by the year's vaccine.
And each year, the vaccine typically protects against three to four specific strains of the flu. The vaccine contains strains of both Influenza A and Influenza B, the most common types of flu.
As Business Insider previously reported, it could take years to develop a vaccine to fight COVID-19.
"When people get up there and say we are going to have a vaccine in months, it is misleading," Dr. Gregory Poland, the director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research group, said in an interview with Business Insider. "That is not going to happen in the US."
The cost and exact timeframe for creating such a vaccine is unknown. Estimates for cost range from as low as $200 million and as high as $1.5 billion.
While researchers may be able to develop a vaccine for this particular coronavirus strain, it might not be until after the current outbreak has ended, according to the Business Insider report.
The White House, meanwhile, has been scrambling to address the virus as more cases and deaths continue to be reported across the US. The president appointed Vice President Mike Pence the head of the administration's coronavirus task force at a press conference last week. But was also accused of barring Dr. Fauci, a top US expert on infectious disease on his task force, from speaking publicly about the coronavirus outbreak without approval while inadequately repsonding to the virus.
Fauci, in an interview with Politico published Tuesday, said the coronavirus outbreak in the US "could be really, really bad," and that he doesn't think "we are going to get out of this completely unscathed."
"I think that this is going to be one of those things we look back on and say boy, that was bad," Fauci said.
As of Tuesday, 106 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in the US, according to numbers from Johns Hopkins. Six people in the US have died of the disease COVID-19, all in Washington State.
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