A shortage of monkeys in the United States will delay efforts to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, American researchers have warned.
Tests on rhesus macaque monkeys are typically the last hurdle before human trials can begin. But as scientists race to advance scores of possible vaccines and therapies, US research centres are saying that there are not enough monkeys to undergo trials.
“Nationally there is basically a big shortage,” Koen Van Rompay, of the California National Primate Research Centre, told The Atlantic magazine. “We can’t find any rhesus any longer. They’ve completely disappeared.”
Potential shortages of monkeys had been a cause for concern years before the coronavirus pandemic. In 2018 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted an “analysis of future demand and
