Developing a vaccine in less than a year for a novel pathogen had never been done before Covid-19. This is the behind-the-scenes story of how Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech did it. Watch “A Race Against Covid” with megtirrell now:
, which succeeded beyond anyone's expectations — and will reap billions of dollars in sales of their vaccines this year alone.
Bancel said he awoke sweating at 4 a.m., realizing, "Jeez, there's going to be a pandemic like 1918.""I did a number of calculations, fast calculations, and realized it had already spread," Sahin said. "And it was clear that it was already too late to stop the disease." Albert Bourla, Pfizer's CEO, confirmed Sahin's account, saying in the earliest months of 2020, he was focused on maintaining the company's operations in China. But by late February, he said, he'd determined Pfizer needed to work on a treatment and a vaccine.Kathrin Jansen, head of Pfizer's vaccine research and development, said they assessed all existing technologies, including protein-based vaccines and vaccines using viral vectors.
"Even going into March, there were voices that said vaccines were false hope," recalled Dr. Stephen Hoge, Moderna's president. "It did feel for a period of time that we needed to defend even the idea of trying."
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