Question: How long does it take to make a medicine to cure a virus?

Michael Schubert answered on 19 Mar 2020:

That’s a tough question, because no two medicines take the same amount of time! To make a brand-new medicine, we have to look at the structure of the virus, figure out which parts of the virus are the easiest to block or break, and then figure out what kinds of molecules we can use to block or break them. That can be a quick process if we can easily find the right part of the virus to attack and the right molecule to attack it with. Once we have a good treatment, it then has to be checked for safety, which takes quite a long time, and then it has to be approved for everyone to use. This process normally takes years, but we sometimes rush new medications through very fast if there is an urgent reason, like the coronavirus pandemic.
Luckily, we don’t always have to go through this whole process. Often, we can take a medicine that already exists and find a new way of using it. For the coronavirus, scientists are trying out medicines that we use to treat other diseases, like HIV or malaria. Some of them look like they may be good treatments for COVID-19 (the disease caused by the coronavirus) and, if they are, we will be able to get them to patients very quickly because we already know they are safe for everyone to use!