An Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine Is Already Being Tested on People

But it still won’t be widely available for at least a year

Emily Mullin

Mar 24, 2020·7 min read

A photo of Xinhua Yan working at a lab in Cambridge. She is wearing purple gloves and pipetting. — Scientist Xinhua Yan works in the lab at Moderna in Cambridge, MA on Feb. 28, 2020. Photo: David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe/Getty Images)

Scientists are urgently pursuing vaccines that could protect large numbers of people against the deadly coronavirus. To do this as quickly as possible, one company is skipping early testing steps and fast-tracking a type of vaccine technology that…