The magnificent story of Covid Vaccine

At about 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 3, 2020, a metal box arrived at the  Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center. It contained swabs from a patient from the wet market of the city of Wuhan who was suffering from an unknown pneumonia.

Zhang and team whose business was to sequence thousands of previously unknown viruses set to work on the  sample right away. It took them 40 hours of non stop lab work. By 2 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2020 after toiling through two nights straight, they had mapped the first complete genome of the virus that has now killed 54 lakh human beings.

 “Then I realized that this virus is closely related to SARS, probably 80%. So certainly, it was very dangerous.”

Every year, in the winter seasons, in the crowded suburbs of China, a lot of influenza cases do occur. But this was different. It was a Coronavirus. Normally corona viruses can cause frequent infections in the veterinary stocks. They usually do not jump on to humans. But whenever they had jumped (only twice in the history of mankind) they had run pandemics of worldwide consequences. In 2003, such a SARS infection has spread from China and the country had a lot of flak from the rest of the world for its poor performance.

“Oh No! Not another SARS pandemic !”

“Oh No! Not another SARS pandemic !” Zhang’s first reaction.

Zhang got panicky and rang up Beijing. Beijing was cold. Instead, it instructed him to bring the samples personally to Chinese CDC at Beijing for discussion. That was surprising. 

Professor Zhang Yongzhen had to travel to Wuhan on 8 jan for further details and back to Shanghai. Finally when he boarded a flight to Beijing it was morning of Jan 11, 2020.

Professor Edward Holmes at the University of Sydney, with whom Zhang has co-authored few publications had also heard about one unknown pneumonia inundating the health care of Chinese city. He had been pestering Zhang for more details whom Zhang has been avoiding since that day.

As Zhang walked down the runway to his scheduled flight, he saw one more message from his friend Holmes. He flicked a mail with an attachment sent it to his friend, put his mobile in airplane mode and strapped himself to his seat. Soon he was up at 35,000 feet in the sky isolated from this planet and a measly virus on it.

…

Andrew Rambaut was deep asleep. It was 4 am, jan 2020 an unusually cold night in Scotland, when his phone flashed with a new mail. Rambaut was maintaining an independent but internationally respectable website: Virological.org.

At  6.38 am, Jan 11, 2020 the website posted the full genomic sequence of the virus circulating in Wuhan. That was the first look at a genome that would go on to hold our world into ransom for two more years. Soon thousands of labs all over world were downloading the genetic sequence of a Coronavirus that has been circulating in the City of Wuhan which the Chinese authority and WHO have been denying till that day.

It was still the evening of 10 January, 2020 in the Massachusetts, United States when Stephane Bancel forwarded the sequence to his lab people in the Moderna HQ.

By the time Zhang touched down in Beijing, his discovery was headline news. Chinese officials swooped on his laboratory to demand an explanation.

[ Zhang’s lab was closed by Chinese authorities for “rectification, and his research fund was curtailed. On Jan 11, 2020 China finally acknowledged a SARS infection at the city of Wuhan and officially published the genome sequence of the virus.]

An accurate genetic sequence of the virus is essential for two tools that we need to control a pandemic.

• Testing– It is used to formulate both RTPCR and Antigen test for the virus.
• Vaccine– It is required to plan a vaccine candidate.

…

200 years ago, Edward Jenner had to follow his beautiful milkmaid all the way to her colony of the cowherd and milkmen and collect pus from the tip of the blebs on their fingers. It contained the germ of Cowpox. He had injected the raw pus into the arms of his gardener’s 8 year old son. The Child was saved from Small pox. that was way back in 1799. In latin, cow is called vacca. in these 200 years, vaccination has been completely metamorphosed from those crude days. 

Today, you need not possess the virus live or dead in your lab to prepare the vaccine. That is exactly what the Moderna people did.

They downloaded the code from the net in their USA lab, thousands of mile away from China, and forged a successful vaccine candidate on 24 feb, 2020. It took them exactly 42 days.

By 16 mar, 2020 they have injected it into the arm of first human being and were waiting for the result. 60 days.

Billions of dollars and after trial among 44,000 human volunteers, the vaccine was authorised for human use on 18 dec, 2020.

That was exactly 342 days after the day Jhang had sent a mail to someone outside the mainland of China.

A week earlier Pfizer has been given emergency authorisation for its vaccine. Subsequently few other vaccines are approved for human use.

As on date, more than 9 billion doses have been administered globally. This has saved at least 1.6 million lives ( mainly among the elderly) as estimated by WHO/ECDC and USA portals.

The miracle of modern day medicine is here.