It was approved in September 2009 and was widely available by December 2009. The vaccine candidate was identified in April 2009.

One Coronavirus vaccine has already started trials this one sounds like it is at the candidate stage.

We obviously know a lot more about flu vaccines and I have been told by a cb doc that differences between the viruses explain the timeline the CDC points to of 12-18 months. I trust their expertise but I don’t see why the clinical trial time would be significantly different.