A vaccine for the novel coronavirus could be available as early as this year, according to a senior pharmaceutical executive.

A vaccine would be the answer to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has already sickened more than 4.1 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide. The virus has killed more than 280,000.

Lack of a vaccine for the virus has sent much of the United States, and the world, into lockdown conditions and social distancing to slow the spread of the virus.

Those measures have caused a calamity for the US economy, sending tens of millions of Americans into unemployment.

A vaccine this year would be on a highly accelerated schedule, compared to the timelines which other vaccines make it to public use.

“Well, clinical trials will be done to show it’s effective,” said Dr Paul Stoffels, chief science officer at pharmaceutical and healthcare company Johnson & Johnson. “We’ll have some vaccine available this year it will depends on the authorities, the [Food and Drug Administration] and others to decide whether it can be used earlier before efficacy data are available.”

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