Ambitious Timeline for Vaccine Requires Companies to Accept Risks

A Covid-19 vaccine could happen in as little time as nine months as the FDA looks to eliminate “dead space,” the agency’s vaccines chief said Monday.

The comments by Peter Marks, who oversees vaccine regulation as the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in the Food and Drug Administration, mark one of the shortest and most ambitious timelines laid out by government scientists at the forefront of the coronavirus response.

Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has projected a vaccine would take 12 to 18 months to develop since the ...