Since its outbreak in December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted daily lives of billions all over the world, and added significant pressure on the already existing enormous challenges to the global economic, environmental, social development. More than a year has passed since its outbreak and matters related to its fight seem to get more complicated, with health and the economic situation far from getting better.
The World Health Organisation first learned of this new virus from cases in Wuhan, the People’s Republic of China on 31 December 2019. Globally, as of 23 January 2021, there have been 96,658,420 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 2,092,062 deaths, reported to WHO. These figures are quite alarming and the worst thing is, they keep growing significantly with every single day passing. While most of the infected people experience mild symptoms and recover after 2 to 6 weeks, there is increasing documentation of the long-term effects of COVID-19, including among younger and non-vulnerable groups.
As a natural response to the severity of Covid-19 pandemic to health and high impact to the global economy, governments, international organisations, pharmaceutical companies, and research institutes joined their forces to find an effective Covid-19 vaccine, whereas more than 200 potential vaccines started to develop. Massive vaccination of the population will help to create the herd immunity faster and without excessive deaths, as well to enable a faster and secure return to a new normal.