Racing for a cure

Written by David Fletcher 09 Apr 2020
Racing for a cure

The scientific community is on the hunt for effective, scalable treatments for coronavirus, while at the same time developing a safe and tested vaccine. It took five years to produce an Ebola vaccine. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation said that human trials with an experimental COVID-19 vaccine have already begun. One of a group of volunteers involved in testing, Jennifer Haller, became the first person to receive one at Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute. There is no risk of the volunteers becoming infected, because the shots of the vaccine (named RNA-1273) do not contain the coronavirus itself. WHO says there are over forty potential vaccines and as many as one hundred undergoing development, although only a handful are as yet being clinically tested. There are over thirty companies and academic institutions worldwide trying different approaches to find the silver bullet to beat COVID-19.

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