s the world searches for a way to end the coronavirus pandemic, the race is on to find and produce a vaccine. Some optimistic forecasts suggest that one could be available in 12-18 months -but researchers are already warning that it might not be physically possible to make enough vaccine for everyone, and that rich countries might hoard supplies.The production facilities needed will depend on which kind of vaccine turns out to work best. Some researchers say governments Research facilities at CureVac in Tübingen, Germany, one of dozens of firms working on a coronavirus vaccine.

More than a year after COVID-19 emerged, many mysteries persist about the disease: why do some people get so much sicker than others? Why does lung damage sometimes continue to worsen well after the body seems to have cleared the SARS-CoV-2 virus? And what is behind the extended, multi-organ illness that lasts for months in people with 'long COVID'? A growing number of studies suggest that some of these questions might be explained by the immune system mistakenly turning against the body -a phenomenon known as autoimmunity."This is a rapidly evolving area, but all the evidence is converging," says Aaron Ring, an immunologist at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.Early in the pandemic, researchers suggested that some people have an overactive immune response to COVID infection. Immune-system signalling proteins called cytokines can ramp up to dangerous levels, leading to 'cytokine storms' and damage to the body's own cells. Clinical trials have now shown that some drugs that broadly dampen immune activity seem to reduce death rates in critically ill people, if administered at the right time.But scientists studying COVID are increasingly also highlighting the role of autoantibodies: rogue antibodies that attack either ROGUE ANTIBODIES COULD BE DRIVING SEVERE COVID-19Evidence is growing that self-attacking 'autoantibodies' could be the key to understanding some of the worst cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. By Roxanne Khamsi Physicians treat a person with COVID-19 at a hospital's intensive-care unit in the Czech Republic.

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