Race for the Vaccine: How Countries around the World are Defying the Limits of Time

The world started racing to create a vaccine as early as January, when the first news of Covid-19 emerged. The development and mass production of vaccines is an extremely tedious process. However, experimental vaccines are being pumped out at unprecedented speeds, with some nearing official approval already. The development process is typically divided into three phases before approval. There are currently seven vaccines in phase three, the mass testing stage, with several other vaccines not too far behind (Steckelberg et al., 2020). 

Let’s go through some of the major players.

The famous Oxford vaccine, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is already showing remarkable promise. Immune responses were recorded in late July during trials, and the UK has already ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine (Gallagher, 2020).

Moving on, the Moderna vaccine in the United States shows great potential, as observed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Possible Diseases. After starting phase three trials at the end of July, the Moderna vaccine is predicted to be ready by early 2021. Several medical professionals believe that the Moderna vaccine’s rapid progress could mean the United States will not have to depend on an international vaccine when the time comes (Soucheray, 2020).

Finally, China-based company Sinopharm’s vaccine rocketed into phase three of trials in mid-July, the first Covid-19 vaccine to do so. Choosing to conduct trials in the United Arab Emirates due to the high resident diversity, the vaccine’s speedy development has officials predicting it to be commercially available at the end of 2020 (“China’s Sinopharm,” 2020). 

With the end of 2020 nearing, the light at the end of the tunnel is approaching, slowly but surely. In the meanwhile, all we can do is sit tight, wear a mask, and keep socially distancing.