The first case of infection from the Covid-19 virus was recorded in China in mid-November 2019.
Since that time this tiny virus has been responsible for infecting 115 million people in 219 countries and taken the lives of 2.6 million. Six weeks ago, infections reached a peak with 1,723,209 new cases in one day.
Covid has disrupted settled human existence in virtually every corner of the planet. One week ago, the total number of students closed out of schools worldwide was 1.38 billion.
The bad news: it’s not over. The good news: it could have been a lot worse.
This Thursday, Cornerstone’s Life Sciences & Health practice will host a webinar discussing the most remarkable aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic: the speed with which is it being brought under control.
Only two things stop a pandemic. It loses steam when the target population becomes so heavily infected there is nowhere left for the virus to continue growing. In the old days, a pandemic was over when there were no people left to infect.
The second weapon is a vaccine.
Vaccines as a disease fighter date back two hundred years but with dubious efficacy. Milestones have been few and far apart because vaccines are incredibly difficult to develop. It took 28 years to find a vaccine for chickenpox.
Within 15 months, according to the WHO, several vaccines are in use, 50 candidate vaccines are in clinical trials, six vaccines in China and Russia have been given limited approval and three have been given Emergency Use Authorization by the US Federal Drug Administration and are already in distribution to 1.5 million people per day.
According to historians, the Covid-19 pandemic is the most destructive in a century. If, in fact, we are finally turning the corner, it will no doubt go down in history as one of the most amazing victories of modern medical science.
Don’t miss the webinar
Thursday, March 11 at 0900 EST.
Leave a Reply