(Armradio.am) – Moderna Therapeutics, a biotech company co-founded by Noubar Afeyan, Co-Founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, has shipped the first batches of its COVID-19 vaccine, Time reports.
The vaccine was created just 42 days after the genetic sequence of the COVID-19 virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was released by Chinese researchers in mid-January.
The first vials were sent to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, which will ready the vaccine for human testing as early as April.
Moderna’s vaccine against COVID-19 was developed in record time because it’s based on a relatively new genetic method that does not require growing huge amounts of virus.
Instead, the vaccine is packed with mRNA, the genetic material that comes from DNA and makes proteins.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has upgraded the global risk of the coronavirus outbreak to “very high” – its top level of risk assessment, the BBC reports.
But the UN body said there was still a chance of containing the virus if its chain of transmission were broken.
WHO head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also stressed that fear and misinformation were the biggest challenges to overcome.
More than 50 countries have now reported cases of coronavirus.
Globally, more than 80,000 people have been infected. About 2,800 have died – the vast majority in China’s Hubei province. China confirmed another 327 cases – the lowest daily increase for a month – along with 44 deaths.
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