Pfizer/BioNTech was the first to get approval on December 11, 2020, with Moderna getting approval a week later. The latter approach utilized a different virus in order to genetically encode instructions intended to fight off COVID-19 infections. Both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech utilized an mRNA approach requiring 2 shots, while Johnson Johnson a viral vector approach requiring just a single shot. Their formulations successfully passed in Phase 3 clinical trials in the fall of 2020 and received a rare emergency use authorization from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As of today, companies such as Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech have been successful in producing COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Recent advances in nanotechnology, and particularly lipid-based nanoparticles, offered an avenue for researchers to deliver mRNA to the body’s tissue and harness the technique to produce a next-generation subunit vaccine, and many leading pharmaceutical companies were eager to try and do so. mRNA therapeutic delivery previously had limited applications in humans due to the instability of mRNA in vivo and was primarily being explored as an experimental strategy for cancer therapy, but the urgency of the pandemic required rapid development of a vaccine with a high safety profile, ease of scale up/production, and strong therapeutic efficacy, which a mRNA vaccination could provide. In the spring and summer of 2020, academic research groups and pharmaceutical companies turned their attention to messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccination, a different vaccination strategy which utilizes the host’s cellular machinery to synthesize a viral protein product and establish protective immunity within the host. For these reasons, scientists and pharmaceutical companies faced a unique pressure from citizens and governments to create, manufacture, and widely distribute a vaccine immediately, as opposed to after the several years of development, testing, and quality control this process normally requires. Scientists maintained that lockdowns, social distancing/physical isolation, mask-wearing, and other stopgap measures would continue to be necessary for public health until a vaccine for COVID-19 became widely available, but such conditions are unsustainable for extended periods of time, as evidenced by the disruption of economies and livelihoods around the world and the increase in suicide rates and mental health issues caused by isolation. COVID-19 presented several novel challenges in this regard the ease of spread of the disease and the high observed fatality rate made it impossible to ignore or downplay the impact of the virus for the general population. Historically, live, killed, and subunit vaccines have been critical in controlling the spread of similar diseases such as smallpox and hepatitis, but these diseases have been limited in their international presence, infectivity and case fatalities. This pandemic is not yet over - many countries, particularly developing ones with low vaccine access and/or poor population compliance, are still being ravaged by the virus, new variants are frequently emerging which continue to create new outbreaks and challenge the effectiveness of these vaccines, and individuals are still reeling from the economic and health impacts caused by the virus, but experts can confidently state that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, and this paradigm shift can be significantly attributed to newly developed mRNA vaccines. Today, these vaccines are being administered at an unprecedented rate and slowly allowing “normal” life to resume for societies around the world. After several difficult months, billions of dollars in investment, and the near single-minded focus of the scientific community, multiple novel vaccines were produced against the new disease. This steadfast belief in the public health impact of vaccines highlights the transformative role that they have played in ensuring human health. If (slot) slot.addService(googletag.When the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill in the spring of 2020, the medical and scientific communities, alongside political leaders and national governments, rapidly arrived at a consensus that wide-scale vaccination against the SARS-CoV2 virus would be the most effective strategy to control the impact of the disease and allow for the quickest return to normalcy. (function (a, d, o, r, i, c, u, p, w, m) Israeli experts analyze mRNA COVID vaccines long-term effects - The Jerusalem Post
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