The first human trials of a vaccine to fight coronavirus are set to begin within days, scientists have announced.

Healthy volunteers in the US will be given the new-generation “genetic hack” after it bypassed standard animal testing as part of a highly accelerated process.

If the candidate drug proves safe, it will then be tried on larger groups of patients infected with Covid-19 to test its efficacy.

Pharmaceutical industry leaders hope there could be millions of doses ready within 12 to 18 months, but admit “it’s aspirational”.

Although an effective vaccine would come online too late to prevent the expected peak of UK cases, currently forecast for May or June, it could dampen future waves.

On Friday, Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, warned coronavirus could be an “annual seasonal infection”.

Meanwhile other experts said natural immunity may not be permanent, meaning even those who have experienced Covid-19 would benefit from a vaccine.

The candidate vaccine, developed by Moderna, a Massachusetts-based company, is a departure from the traditional model, whereby a weakened pathogen or protein from the surface of a pathogen is injected so that the body learns to fight off future infections.

Instead, the drug is based on a molecule called messenger RNA, or mRNA, programmed to provoke human cells to produce coronavirus-like proteins, which the immune system can then learn to block.

The synthetic approach has the advantage of speed, however it is highly unusual for trials to start in humans without first having been tested on animals, usually mice.