The Mirarcle Cure

Guest Contributor
Raman Kolluri

I am 84, and have received both shots of the Moderna vaccine in January, February this year. I am very impressed how well organized the facilities were at Camden County College in New Jersey and the ease with which I was able to avail of this vaccine.

I am a scientist by training and thus I do not use the word miracle either lightly or in the conventional sense of the term. Yet, I do find it miraculous that a vaccine has been developed for the coronavirus-19 within a year. COVID-19 virus has devastated the population of the world for nearly a year now. 

Currently it has affected 110 million people all over the world and among them, ~2.5 million people died. The United States, which has the highest rate of both infections as well as deaths, has 28 million cases affected and ~half a million have died. The Spanish flu pandemic, which took place in 1918, was the deadliest in history at that time. It infected nearly 500 million people - almost a third of the earth’s population. It killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people, worldwide. In the US 675 thousand people died. 

It is very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to develop a vaccine. In order to develop it several things needs to come together: i) determine the genetic sequence of the virus, ii) inactivate the virus, iii) conduct clinical trials using healthy, normal volunteers to measure the antibodies in the blood and ensure that they are no dangers associated with the vaccine, iv) conduct a second round of clinical trials in larger populations, v) get regulatory approval and then, vi) finally the distribution and injecting of the vaccine can take place. 

The procedure for developing a vaccine has not changed very much since 1918. However, the new classes of vaccines use a material that can be synthesized in a laboratory. This allows a vaccine to be developed very fast. Further, researchers can use the knowledge acquired from previous corona-virus and vaccine research. For instance, COVID-19 was found to be very similar to the previously known SARS and MERS corona-viruses. Hence, researchers did not have to start completely from scratch. This enabled Moderna to jump ahead and develop the initial vaccine in March 2020. 

The sheer volume of research on one single corona-virus globally helped immensely. Researchers all over the world competed and developed their vaccines to be the first in the market. This allowed many companies to produce large volumes of the vaccine. If one did not succeed, another was just behind it. 

Normally, regulatory bodies like FDA, take a long time for the approval of a drug. The drug manufacturers usually wait till such approval is received to produce large quantities. In this case, the regulatory authorities also acted very fast so that, the medicines were brought into the market very fast. 

Under normal circumstances, funding for research is a major hurdle. But because of the pandemic nature of the virus and the tremendous loss of life, Governments and private organizations poured an unprecedented amount of money into this research. 

Finally, the drug manufacturing companies established supply chains, quickly and in collaboration with government agencies, we're able to establish an efficient distribution system to make the vaccine available to people very fast. It is this unprecedented cooperation among all agencies that have enabled the vaccine available to the public so fast. 

I am personally a beneficiary of this tremendous achievement. I used to travel extensively before the pandemic started. Indeed in an earlier note, I had indicated that I am within striking distance of having visited 100 countries.  All of that came to a complete halt for nearly a year. I have now received both doses of the vaccine and hope to travel again soon (and reach that 100 number!)

For the Spanish Flu, it took 20 years to develop a vaccine, and for COVID-19 it took less than a year. 

This progress in science, technology and collaboration feel to me, like a miracle!