COVINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky is playing a major role in the battle against coronavirus. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell met with leaders of a Northern Kentucky lab on Monday doing innovative work on a vaccine.

“Things that usually take 11 years are being done in 11 months right now,” said Tim Schroeder, CEO of CTI Clinical Trial and Consulting. 

His lab just announced a large vaccine study they will conduct on 60,000 people using vials made by Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies. 

“Presuming that we have one or more vaccines approved in the next 3 to 6 months, and we believe that will very strongly happen, of the early candidates, the data looks extremely positive in the first five or six, but the question becomes not scale up but it becomes distribution,” Schroeder said.

McConnell emphasized the next phase of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act which pertains to treatment, testing, and vaccines. 

McConnell said several large companies are advancing production, hoping vaccines will work in the mass studies.

“Many companies are already beginning to produce doses even before the clinical trials are finished, if they look optimistic, they’re producing doses early so they don’t start at zero as soon as the clinical trial proves out. That obviously helps,” McConnell said.

Ultimately, it will boil down to deployment.

“How do we get it to people? And if you think about it, who are the most at need, it’s the elderly population, it’s the immunocompromised, those with abnormal immune systems, it is those that are in assisted living facilities, those that are in prisons, it’s the urban inner-city poor that don’t have access to medical care,” Schroeder said.

Also on Monday, first responders in Scott County met with McConnell. The senator highlighted COVID-19 efforts and CARES Act impact in that area.