Corporate DispatchPro COVID-19 Vaccine
A dose of joy On December 8, the world took a glimpse of the future and it looked like a frail 90-year-old woman with flaxen hair sitting in a doctor’s office. Margaret Keenan became the first person to receive the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, a week after UK regulators approved the jab for emergency use. It was a moment everyone had been waiting impatiently for since the start of the outbreak even while experts and governments were doing their best not to raise expectations unnecessarily. The development of the vaccine in record-time was itself an achievement of science and collaboration and by the time Keenan was administered her dose, three projects had already announced successful completion of their trial processes. Another 18 were in phase-three testing. This flurry of vaccines demonstrates not only the dynamism of researchers and the pharmaceutical sector, but the creative force that the scientific community is. In January, the entire genome of the corona virus was sequenced and made publicly available, a feat that allowed scientists to identify the protein that the coronavirus uses to bind to receptors that usher it inside the cell. Pfizer/BioNTech was the first to announce phase-three results in early November, sending a spontaneous wave of celebration across the globe. The impressive results showing 90 percent effectiveness was closely followed by the Moderna trial conclusions, achieving nearly 95 percent effectiveness. Both teams were working with an innovative technology known as Messenger RNA (mRNA). Traditionally, vaccines introduce modified versions of a virus to teach the body how to fight a particular disease in the future. This approach has proved fairly adequate in the last 70 years and it is estimated that up to three million lives are saved annually from inoculation. Producing these vaccines, however, is a long process and, many times, resource intensive.
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