December 1, 2021
As Covid-19 brought nearly every corner of the Earth to a halt early last year, researchers around the world scrambled to develop a vaccine to fend off the deadly respiratory coronavirus. And just several months later — in a process that normally takes years — several vaccines were ready for worldwide distribution.
In comparison, about 40 years since the earliest reports of what became known as AIDS, scientists are still scratching their heads to develop a vaccine against the virus that causes the life-threatening disease — HIV.
But as the anniversary of the first Covid-19 vaccine shots approaches, experts say the brisk development of the lifesaving and highly effective coronavirus vaccines may have brought researchers closer to cracking the code to develop an HIV vaccine.
“There’s a lot of new energy and buzz among scientists looking at how quickly some of the Covid science got done,” said Rowena Johnston, the vice president and director of research at amfAR, an international nonprofit AIDS research group. “I think there’s been a lot of soul-searching about how the scientific enterprise can be improved so that we can better serve the people we’re trying to help.”
Read more at NBC News.