Question: When there’s a new virus, what do you look for the first, the treatment or the vaccine? And, what is the less complicated thing to find?

Alena Pance answered on 9 Jun 2020:

As is happening with the present pandemic, everything is being worked at simultaneously because it is so urgent. So we are studying the virus, sequencing its genome, studying the disease, looking for treatment and designing a vaccine. For a long term solution, a vaccine is essential because ultimately it avoids the disease, but a treatment is really crucial to be able to help people with the disease to recover from it.
As to what is less complicated, that is difficult to say, there are different challenges in each of them. However, I suppose that if a virus is very stable, ie it doesn’t change with time very much, then a vaccine could be a bit more straighforward, using an inactivated virus. If the virus changes a lot, a vaccine will be very difficult to develop. Treatment for viruses is also very difficult if the strategy is to prevent it from invading cells or from spreading in the body, but it is also possible to treat the symptoms to help the body gather strength to fight the virus. For that, it is necessary to understand the virus and the disease and that can take a long time. Sorry I cannot give a straight answer this time!