- Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have pioneered a new method for developing vaccines which has led to rapid production of a Covid-19 vaccine
- Questions are being asked of the regulatory and roll-out process
Unprecedented. There is no doubt that the word has been overused in 2020 – a savage virus, restrictive governments and national lockdowns are rare and exceptional, but not, as Oxford’s dictionary defines unprecedented, ‘never known before’.
Vaccine development is different. There is no precedent for the pace at which coronavirus vaccines have been created in 2020. And – in the case of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines – there is no precedent for the modus operandi either. Released into a world increasingly nervous about vaccination by regulators that are at the mercy of desperate governments could seem ominous.