THE RACE FOR A VACCINE.

• Author: Anastasia, Laura

As COVID-19 devastates people's lives all over the world, scientists are working day and night to create a sale vaccine. Will they succeed?

Last January, as news of the coronavirus in China was just beginning to spread around the world, scientists at a vaccine research laboratory in Boston dropped everything they were working on and threw themselves into an urgent mission: finding a vaccine for this deadly new contagion.

Ever since then, researchers at the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have worked around the clock, trying to accomplish in months scientific breakthroughs that normally take years. Despite the enormity of the task, they are making progress.

"I'm even more optimistic now than I was several months ago," says Dr. Dan Barouch, the center's director and one of the world's leading vaccine-makers.

Barouch's lab in Boston is one of more than 100 teams of researchers around the globe desperately working to develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine. Never before have so many scientists from so many nations been so focused on a single goal. And they're trying to do it faster than anyone has ever made a vaccine before.

'Still Deadly'

That's because the devastation of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has been so vast: In just the first eight months of this year, more than 22 million people worldwide were infected with the virus, and more than 781,000 were killed. The United States has been one of the hardest-hit nations in the world; as this issue went to press, it accounted for about one-fourth of all cases and deaths. And the numbers keep rising.

Desperate to contain the virus, many countries and U.S. states closed schools and businesses this past spring. Millions of people were urged to stay home. Health experts say such measures helped slow the spread, but they took a devastating toll on the global economy. In the U.S., tens of millions of people lost their jobs. More than 100,000 companies went out of business. And more than one-quarter of Americans reported not having dependable access to food.

Struggling to balance safety with protecting jobs, parts of the U.S. and several other nations let businesses reopen. But some areas then saw a huge surge in cases. Experts warn that without a vaccine, that trend will continue.

"The virus is still spreading fast, it's still deadly, and most people are still susceptible," says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who leads the...