Breaking: First Batch of Coronavirus Vaccine Shipped!
42 days after the genetic sequence of the COVID_19 virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was released by Chinese researchers, the vaccine has finally been created! A biotech company based in Cambridge, Moderna Therapeutics, has shipped the first batches of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, received the first vials and will get it ready for human testing in April. According to TIME, the NIH also began testing an antiviral drug called ‘remdesivir’ that had been developed for Ebola, on a patient infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Moderna Therapeutics’ vaccine against COVID-19 was developed in record time because it’s based on a relatively new genetic method that does not require growing huge amounts of virus.
