Dr. Paul Stoffels, Chief Scientific Officer at Johnson & Johnson joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss progress on a coronavirus vaccine, the possible timeline for distribution, and the outlook for 12 months from now.

MYLES UDLAND: You mentioned the coronavirus. That's really the main event right now the market is keying off of. And right now, we are joined by Dr. Paul Stoffels. He is the chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson. We're also joined by Yahoo Finance's Adam Shapiro right now. So, Dr. Stoffels, thanks for joining the program. And I would just like to start with the question I think a lot of us citizens outside the medical community are wondering, which is where do we stand on the virus and maybe getting something like a vaccine so that we can begin thinking about going back to living a normal life? Which I think here in New York, we know is going to be many months away, but it's certainly something on the minds of folks all around the globe.

PAUL STOFFELS: Well, can you understand me-- can you hear me?

MYLES UDLAND: We got you just fine.

PAUL STOFFELS: OK, thank you. So yeah, we are making good progress with a vaccine. We started early January as soon as the virus was known to us, and we are now close to selecting a candidate vaccine, which we then bring forward for preclinical and clinical testing. At the moment, that testing is planned to start large scale in November. In the meantime, we are upscaling, doing all the preclinical work with the regulators.

A vaccine, because you need to administer to many, many healthy people, it has to be very safe and effective. And that's why we need some time to test. But I'm pretty comfortable that within 12 months, we will be in a different situation, and probably will be able to start vaccinating people. In the meantime, it will be prevention, social distancing, and whatever we can do to alleviate people who are sick.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Dr. Stoffels, it's Adam Shapiro, and thank you for joining us. I heard you just say that you believe that in about 12 months we will begin large scale vaccination against the coronavirus. I'm curious-- is this being coordinated with BARDA, that office within the Department of Health and Human Services-- the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority-- to get this done quickly? And how long would it take to vaccinate the entire US population?

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PAUL STOFFELS: Well, so it's-- yeah, BARDA is very much involved in this national-- or international coordination. We have been working with BARDA on several viruses since long time. So we are partners with BARDA on Ebola, on flu, on different diseases in a long time. And now we kicked off with BARDA this collaboration six weeks ago, and we are working very hard together in involving many of the government capabilities as well as pharmaceutical vaccine capabilities.

So if you talk about large scale, of course, you can't vaccinate everyone at once. You can't produce vaccines to a level that everyone can be vaccinated at once. So what needs to be done is first vaccinating the high risk people who have highest risk-- like the health care workers, like the elderly people, and those people who are most at risk to get very sick or even die from the disease. And it's up to the health care system and the health authorities in every country, and especially also in the US, to determine who should get vaccinated first. And hopefully-- we have technology to produce very large quantities, and we will activate that system very quickly as we have a vaccine which we are going to develop. So more news about that soon.

ADAM SHAPIRO: You know, you're the chief scientific officer at the world's third-largest pharmaceutical company, Johnson & Johnson. And I'm curious-- is it realistic to expect a vaccine to safeguard all of us? Because we keep hearing different doctors and news programs talk about this is like the flu or this is like the cold. And yet, we don't have a vaccine that prevents the cold. So which is it?

PAUL STOFFELS: Will, the cold is-- the cold is something different. The flu, yes, there, we have vaccines, as you know. And people get infected, get sick, but also over time, people build immunity as well as if you go for your annual shots, you do better in protecting yourself. This is a totally new virus, which nobody has seen before. Therefore, there's no immunity. And most of the people-- many people who go to the infections without symptoms.

But as we see now, a lot of people go to the infection with symptoms-- and especially the elderly people. And that's why this is a unique, high risk virus which is going around the world where, hopefully, it gets to a stop before we need a vaccine. But if that's not the case, then at least there is a vaccine to put a stop to the epidemic at a certain point. And I think that's important. We all hope we don't need this vaccine-- that it is done as soon as possible.

But seeing the evolution of what happened over the world since Wuhan and now Europe, Italy, Spain, and England and more and more countries getting in this wave of very high number of new cases, the likelihood that this will be under control soon is low. And that is-- it's not up to me to predict the epidemiology, but it does look like that.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Doctor Stoffels, this is Anjalee Khemlani. I just wanted to follow up on that because there is also debate in the health care community about whether or not this is going to be a seasonal outbreak and what your thoughts are on that. Because if you're looking at a vaccine 12 months from now, that will be well past what an outbreak would be, even if we do see some sort of seasonality, correct?

PAUL STOFFELS: Well, seasonality most probably, it will-- if it is the same virus, it will come in waves until a large majority of the people get infected and get antibodies. So that's where it could go away, but it also could come back in waves with the season waves coming from new areas in the world. It's very difficult to predict at this moment. And hopefully, it is one virus where there's no seasonality, and the next mutation comes next year, because now we have a bigger problem than we have to make sure that we have vaccines to vaccinate every year or second or third year to protect people for the next variation of the virus.

But up till now, I think-- but again, I'm not an expert in the world on that-- it doesn't look like that. So hopefully it stays with one virus going around the world and making sure that we get this under control as soon as possible. If not, with the vaccine, at a certain point, we can put a stop to this.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Fair enough. And additionally, I know that, generally speaking, vaccines are not revenue-generating products, right? We know that if you do develop one, the amount of time it takes, you never really recover that. I'm curious on your thoughts, though, switching to treatment, actually-- Gilead's move to rescind that orphan drug designation-- knowing what we do about the vaccine side of it, I just want to know what your thoughts are on how this is all playing out for the world as we watch the pharma sector play up with this.

PAUL STOFFELS: Well, you say we are the third-largest pharma company. We are the largest health care company in the world-- J&J. We existence in more than 35 years. For us, the main goal is serve now the public and make sure that this epidemic comes to an end. This is absolutely not our first objective and even not our objective to make this-- do this from commercial purposes. We have the capabilities. We did an HIV vaccine and Ebola vaccine, a Zika vaccine, and an RSE vaccine.

We know to put-- if we put the next train on the-- a train on the rails here for the vaccine, we know time, hour, and day what we need to do to get there. And so that's why we say, we have to do this for the benefit of the world. And this is not from commercial-- absolutely not commercial purposes. We are all human beings in our company, and in the community of J&J, people who is committed to make this happen for the benefit of the world.

MYLES UDLAND: All right, Dr. Paul Stoffels is the chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson. Really appreciate you taking the time-- thanks so much for calling in today.

PAUL STOFFELS: My pleasure. Thank you.

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'We are making good progress with a vaccine' says JNJ Chief Scientific Officer on coronavirus - Yahoo Money