I have no idea how they developed the COVID vaccine in 40 hours, but that was not the question you asked. From the JH article, clinical trials for vaccines can indeed last 10 years.
Well I will tell you. This incredible achievement is built very much on the shoulders of genome decoding. This has to be decoded much like any other code.
Then you have to reverse engineer it, so to speak, so you can synthesize the RNA or DNA molecular sequences to direct the cellular ribosomes in the cell to synthesize just the antigens you need to set up the immune response. You have to devise a way to get the code into the cell. The mRNA vaccines use a Nano shield to protect the coded genetic material. The DNA vaccines use are harmless virus to deliver the coded sequences into the cell. This is all very much analogous to decoding the Nazi enigma codes, and then constructing messages to confuse them. In this case not confusion, but skillful imitation.
This research has been going on for years, in which the genome project has contributed. Numerous research labs around the world have played their part.
Normally vaccines have been produced very much by trial an error from attenuated live organisms or killed ones.
For Covid-19 these vaccines were produced from design and NOT trial and error.
As the story was told by the Oxford group in an hour long television program, the group got the genome sequencing of the Covid-19 virus from the top secret biological and chemical warfare unit at Porton Down, early one Saturday morning. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert immediately contacted Professor Teresa Lambe, professor of vaccinology at the Jenner Institute. She said she was still in bed and in her pajamas! She grabbed her laptop and stayed in bed all weekend until she had constructed the correct sequencing of the DNA coding to direct cells to produce a selection of the spike antigens. So that is where the forty hours comes from.
Then it was over to Dr. Linda Dixon, supervisor of the small production lab at the Jenner Institute to figure out the viral vector and how to produce enough vaccine to start the phase I trials.
At this time the vital help of the Rocky Mountain Primate Lab at Hamilton Montana was enlisted.
Now of course the placebo controlled phase III trails usually take a long time, but NOT in a pandemic. If you have a pandemic then it does not take long for vaccinated subjects and the placebo subjects to meet the virus. With a virus with high community spread it does not take a long time to achieve levels of therapeutic significance.
In fact in the UK as phase three trials started there was a trough between the first and second peaks, so the team had to go to Brazil and South Africa, where cases where rampant.
On the other hand if you have a virus prone to localized epidemics, like Ebola virus say, then progress can be painfully slow. Remember we have not had a pandemic like this for over a hundred years.
Lastly we go back to the fact that these vaccines were right by design. This has not really happened since 1796 when Dr. Edward Jenner made the astute observation that cow pox was an attenuated version of smallpox. This observation led him to develop a vaccine for small pox, and stopped a pandemic over 30 years. At that early date it was understandable that populations would not easily be persuaded to subject themselves to such a novel idea! We have no excuse. Other vaccines have been very much trial and error, with a need for multiple trial series, until there was useful efficacy. So these vaccines have scored success at the end of the first trial series.
It really is an outstanding achievement. It is most galling that so many want to look a "gift horse in the mouth."
