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Coronavirus: how will the vaccine advances of 2020 alter the pandemic path in 2021?
- The extreme lows brought by Covid-19 have sparked unprecedented speed in developing and approving vaccines and rolling them out
- A number of factors beyond the shots themselves will determine if and how transmissions are curbed
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This is the latest story in our series on the Covid-19 pandemic, a year after the first cases were reported in the mainland Chinese city of Wuhan. It explores how vaccines have advanced at unprecedented speed and what prospects they hold for the fight against the disease this year. Please support us in our mission to bring you quality journalism.
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One year after a novel coronavirus caused the worst pandemic in a century, several vaccines have already been rolled out and others are expected to follow in the coming months.
It is a record. Before this, no vaccine had been developed in less than four years, sometimes taking decades.
The year 2020 was catastrophic for many people, but it was also a record-setting year in terms of vaccine research. Now the big question is: how will Covid-19 vaccines make a difference in 2021?
How history was made in 2020
The genome sequence of the new coronavirus was shared on a public platform on January 11, 2020, and thanks to the tireless work of the team led by Shanghai-based virologist Zhang Yongzhen, scientists in various countries began to work on vaccines.
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For example, on January 13 last year, US company Moderna and the National Institutes of Health had already finalised the sequence for an mRNA vaccine against the new virus and they soon began to make a clinical batch.
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