코로나 백신 타임라인: 첫 임상 착수부터 접종 까지<br /><br />Countries are now rolling out vaccines for COVID-19,... now a year since the virus took center stage ... impacting many facets of everyday life.<br />Achieving these vaccines has been one of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced.<br />Choi Won-jong looks at the timeline of their development.<br />"From the first clinical trials to the vaccines' worldwide rollout less than a year. This was the fastest development of a vaccine in history... and it was done in unprecedented circumstances."<br />The U.S. government launched a program in May... called 'Operation Warp Speed' to expedite a COVID-19 vaccine... by funding research at global pharmaceutical companies like Moderna and Pfizer.<br />"Its objective is to finish developing and to manufacture and distribute a proven coronavirus vaccine as fast as possible. Again, we would love to see that we could do it prior to the end of the year."<br />Moderna's first trials had started in March... using the mRNA approach to trigger the immune system to make antibodies to fend off infection.<br />By mid-summer, both Moderna and Pfizer had entered the final stage of trials phase 3.<br />In under five months, by November, two vaccine developers had released results showing a vaccine efficacy above 90 percent.<br />The next month was the start of full-fledged inoculation.<br />The UK was first, authorizing more than 800-thousand doses.<br />A 90-year-old British woman was the first to get vaccinated in the official rollout.<br />The U.S. was quick to follow.<br />"I am pleased to announce that late yesterday the FDA authorized for emergency use the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. This is the first COVID-19 vaccine to be authorized in the United States."<br />The U.S. is also using the Moderna vaccine, and the CDC says those two shots have been administered to more than 1-point-9 million people, including Vice President Mike Pence and President-elect Joe Biden, both of whom got it on live TV.<br />To make a population safe from the virus, the World Health Organization estimates that 65 to 70 percent of people would need to be vaccinated, which is still a long way off.<br />As reaching that goal, the WHO aims to make sure vaccines are distributed fairly to countries both poor and rich through COVAX, the global vaccine alliance.<br />Choi Won-jong, Arirang News.<br />
