Hussain Mustafa, 13, receives his first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Karachi, Pakistan, January 3, 2022. REUTERS/ Akhtar Soomro
Until COVID-19, vaccines tended to be targeted at specific groups, such as children, the elderly or vulnerable people.Then everything changed: 11 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines were produced in 2021 alone. Despite an effective measles vaccine being available for more than half a century, 140,000 deaths from the disease were recorded in 2018—mostly among children in developing countries, according to France's INSERM institute.Since British physician Edward Jenner came up with the first vaccine in 1796 for smallpox, several different kinds have been developed.
More recently, viral vector vaccines, used for Ebola or AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccines, take a modified version of a different, harmless virus to smuggle genetic instructions to the body's cells, telling them to make antibodies. Before the pandemic, four companies accounted for 90 percent of the global vaccine market: American giants Pfizer and Merck, Britain's GSK and France's Sanofi.
It has also spurred production in nations that missed out on the lion's share of vaccine doses earlier in the pandemic.Such projects have been made possible by mRNA vaccines, which can be updated and developed more swiftly, while "traditional technologies remain complicated to deploy and relocate," Plantevin said.