Dear Editor,

Coronavirus vaccine may take well over a year. This is from a new posting.

World leaders need to come together and sign a global access agreement. Such an agreement could help guarantee that vulnerable populations — the elderly, healthcare workers, people in resource-poor epicenters — get first dibs at the vaccine. It would also allow whichever company or university that wins the race for a COVID-19 vaccine to swiftly transfer its biotechnology across borders.

A global access agreement might also lead to creation of more than one COVID-19 vaccine, each effective but with different prices for different markets. Such a setup has happened in the past for pneumococcal and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines.

If a COVID-19 vaccine does emerge, one big open question is how long immunity might last.

If you get it once and your immunity is lifelong, then that would be a great scenario for the world. However, immunity to cold-causing coronaviruses typically lasts only a year or two which suggests that people would need seasonal shots of any COVID-19 vaccine.

People need to push our slow-to-move elected officials to act for us instead of themselves and the powerbrokers behind them.

Charles Roberts,

Sugar Grove