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How much does it cost to develop a vaccine?

In his press conference on Friday, President Rodrigo Duterte announced that he would be raising the reward for any Filipino who would discover a vaccine for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Instead of the initial P10 million offer, the president is now willing to give at least P50 million or even P100 million.

Despite these seemingly large sums of money, experts say that P50 million barely cuts the expenses needed to develop a vaccine.

According to a study published in American Journal of Public Health in 2006, development costs can actually reach around $200 million to $500 million per vaccine.

This is equivalent to a staggering P10 billion to P25 billion.

This estimate covers the entire process of the development, from research and discovery to product registration.

"Vaccine research and product development is lengthy, complex, and loaded with binary outcome risks," the study said.

Although 62 efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine have been underway according to the World Health Organization, experts say that it will still take at least a year to 18 months before a vaccine becomes available.

"Maybe with the new technology, maybe with throwing enough money on it, that'll happen. But we have to be really careful about those time estimates," Baylor University’s National School of Tropical Medicine dean Peter Hotez told National Geographic.

The study said that it often takes more than 10 years to deliver a final, licensed vaccine for diseases since it also requires managerial and funding commitment throughout the endeavor.

The mumps vaccine, licensed in 1967, took four years to develop and this is already considered as the fastest vaccine ever to be approved, said National Geographic.

Clinical trials of vaccines come in three phases and the first stages of the COVID-19 trials aren't due for completion until 2021 or much later.

However, the time allotted also allows safety precautions to be met. For example, preliminary vaccines related to the SARS coronavirus actually enhanced the disease in its model experiments. —MGP, GMA News

This article P50M reward? Study shows vaccine development costs $200M to $500M was originally published in GMA News Online.