World wide, greater than 10 million individuals have been contaminated with COVID-19, greater than a half-million have died, and hundreds are nonetheless identified each day. In an effort to cease its unfold and eradicate COVID-19 eternally, the worldwide scientific neighborhood has been working collectively to develop a vaccine in file time.
Earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, analysis, improvement, and distribution for a brand new vaccine might take as much as 15 years. However immediately, healthcare firms all over the world are racing in opposition to the clock to create a secure and efficient COVID-19 vaccine in a matter of months.
“That is an Apollo-13 second on a world scale,” stated Seema Kumar, Vice President Innovation, World Health and Science Coverage, Johnson & Johnson, referring to the heroic and herculean effort it took to avoid wasting a precarious area mission. “The perfect minds all over the world are working across the clock, with excessive urgency, with nice innovation and science and with nice collaboration to avoid wasting individuals in every single place.”
However what’s going to it take to develop a COVID-19 vaccine? The Highway to a Vaccine, a reside digital collection from Johnson & Johnson, goes behind the scenes to discover the COVID-19 disaster and the worldwide neighborhood’s efforts to develop a working vaccination at a file tempo. Journalist Lisa Ling hosts the collection, which brings a broad vary of consultants from the scientific neighborhood, together with scientists and frontline health employees, along with the general public to debate the world’s response to the pandemic. Constructing off thousands and thousands of video views in its debut season, The Road to a Vaccine enters its second season this month, diving additional into fact, transparency and science of COVID-19, and the trail to a possible vaccine.
What’s the coronavirus?
Coronavirus is a category of viruses in animals and people. There are coronaviruses that trigger the widespread chilly and others that trigger extra severe illness, similar to the unique SARS virus in 2003, the MERS virus in 2012, and now COVID-19.
How is COVID-19 completely different?
On the premiere episode of “The Highway to a Vaccine,” Chief Scientific Officer for Johnson & Johnson, Dr. Paul Stoffels, stated COVID-19 is completely different for 2 causes: It is spreading extraordinarily quick and there is not any immunity. Organizations are working tirelessly on a vaccine in the hope of constructing one obtainable subsequent 12 months. He says there’s a nice want for the worldwide health neighborhood to make sure the vaccine is obtainable to these most in danger, similar to healthcare employees who look after ailing sufferers.
How does a COVID-19 virus enter wholesome cells?
Dr. Rinke Bos, principal scientist, vaccines at The Janssen Pharmaceutical Firms of Johnson & Johnson, explains that the COVID-19 virus has spikes on the surface which can be wanted for it to enter the cell. She says that a profitable vaccine would want to introduce antibodies that bind to these spikes so it might not penetrate a cell. If you inject a vaccine like this into wholesome individuals, it indicators the immune system to begin making antibodies that do that.
How would a possible vaccine work?
Whereas there are completely different strategies to create a vaccine, one potential choice is to make use of a standard chilly virus that’s modified so it could actually replicate in people, which means it will not trigger illness. Nonetheless, it nonetheless serves as a service to usher in a chunk of the COVID-19 virus to stimulate an immune response. This service would come with the genetic code that creates antibodies that bind to the COVID-19 spikes, stopping it from penetrating a human cell.
