The race for a Covid-19 vaccine is on

An engineer looks at monkey kidney cells he is testing with an experimental vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus – one of five approved for clinical trials in China. — AFP

The recent emergence of a new coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2, which caused the Covid-19 pandemic on a global scale, has exacted fatalities surpassing its predecessor SARS-CoV-1, which caused the 2002/2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak.

This pandemic is by far the largest since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people.