SCOTTISH health bosses hope to have a coronavirus vaccine by this time next year - but it is not yet known whether the outbreak will return at certain seasons.
Some experts had estimated that a vaccine against coronavirus could be another 18 months away - but Scotland's chief medical officer, Catherine Calderwood, is hopeful of a 12-month timescale - with trials already underway.
She said: "The vaccine development is coming. There’s a small clinical trial already with healthy volunteers.
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"There are many countries around the world racing to get a vaccine and Scotland is part of that research for a vaccine.
"It take time for clinical trials to be moved to the next stage so that there are vaccines. If this is going to be a seasonal virus, we will have the vaccines by this time next year."
But Dr Calderwood stressed that current efforts are being concentrated on preventing the spread and to protecting vulnerable groups from contracting coronavirus.
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She said: "This will become a different way of looking at coronavirus. We can vaccinate people against flu and vulnerable groups.
"People haven’t had antibodies to it before because it’s never been in humans. There area no anti-virual treatments – we have those for flu, and there’s no vaccine. All three of those will change in time.
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"At the moment we have to prevent spread and protect the vulnerable."
She added: "The people that I have been speaking to would very much hope that we will have a vaccine. We don’t know if this is going to be a seasonal virus so it might not come every year.
"We would hope that with clinical trials already beginning for this vaccine, we would have something within a year. It’s not absolutely certain."
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