The race to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus is, perhaps, one of the most important efforts in the contemporary history of science and medicine. In some labs across the world, there is now a cautious optimism that there will be a vaccine for the coronavirus sometime next year.

As of July 28, there were 25 vaccines under clinical evaluation, and 139 others in early evaluation stages, according to a list released by the World Health Organization. Scientists are working overtime and trying many different methods to prevent the disease.

An experimental coronavirus vaccine made by the biotech company Moderna provoked a promising immune response against the virus and appeared safe in the first 45 people who received it, researchers reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in mid-July.

Governments and major pharmaceutical companies are also wading in. The United States government, as part of a project it’s calling “Operation Warp Speed,” is on a quest to have a vaccine by the end of the year.

Still, there is little consensus in the scientific community whether such accelerated timelines — the end of this year, the start of next — are feasible. Even after a vaccine is researched and tested, manufacturing vaccines is complex. The process typically requires large, sterilized vats and the mobilization of hundreds of pharmaceutical factories. The record for developing a vaccine is four years for the mumps vaccine, and a decade is not an unusual timeline.

But, optimists point out, there has also never been a time when so many experts in so many countries focused simultaneously on a single topic and with such urgency. That, alone, gives some researchers hope.

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