On September 30th at 12.30 PM EST, we were joined by Drs. Simon Wain-Hobson, virologist at the Institut Pasteur, and Marie-Paule Kieny, Research Director at Inserm, in a live Zoom conference to address the latest findings and knowledge on the virus and the challenges faced in developing a COVID-19 vaccine.
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked disaster on an international level claiming nearly 1,000,000 lives and infecting almost 30,000,000 people (source, NYT).
The medical research community has been mobilized on a global scale since early 2020 to better understand the source and cause of this virus, its transmission patterns, and how best to develop safe, effective treatments and/or therapies.
Vaccination remains the best weapon to safeguard the international community against the virus. Can the unprecedented commitment of resources resulting from the private-public partnerships tackling vaccine development achieve success in a timely fashion? Where is the industry in the development process? How soon can the world expect a safe and effective vaccine? How will pricing and distribution be managed? And once a vaccine is developed, who will decide which groups are a priority for vaccination?