The Novel Coronavirus: One Year On

    On January the 9th, 2021, the world crossed another grim milestone. 90 Million Corona-virus cases and 2 Million corona-virus deaths. It is genuinely amazing how a small virus can shake our planet. But after around 1 year of panic and terror across the globe, there is light at the end of the tunnel (Thankfully). As of the writing of this article, around 23.86 million individuals have been vaccinated or around 0.305% of the world's population. To achieve what scientist call: Herd Immuntiy, we would need around 90-95% of the world's population to be vaccinated. That is still far fetch so for now we unfortunately just have to wait and see.

A Brief History of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

    The Novel Corona-virus or to give it its scientific name, SARS-CoV-2 is a virus or disease that began first known human-to-human transmission in the Chinese City of Wuhan. It is unclear whether the virus originated from China or from some other place in the world then made its way to China where human transmission began. But the virus likely spread between a pangolin of some sort than to bats and then probably to humans afterwards. The virus then spread across China in the last days of December 2019 and the early ones of January 2020 before arriving in Thailand where the first foreign case of the corona-virus was found. While the world kept mostly quiet about the virus, China was imposing lockdowns nationwide and then the Chinese New Year came which in some way could have accelerated the spread of the virus. 

    Around the 1st of February 2020, the name of the virus was coined, 2019-nCov (2019-Novel Coronavirus) only to have a new official name for the population announced on the 11th of February 2020, COVID-19 (Coronavirus Infectious Disease-2019). In the first days of February 2020, the world jumped from 20,000 to 30,000 and in the blink of an eye, February came and went and cases tripled to 90,000 in early March. But in early march, a few countries had sudden spikes in COVID-19 cases. South Korea, Italy and Iran were the three countries that experienced this. With cases amounting to around 500-800 cases per day. Which then caused a chain of events throughout the world. Europe first felt the effects of a COVID-19 world. Days after WHO Attorney General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (A name I feel sorry I cannot pronounce) declared the virus a Global Pandemic (To put it in other terms: International Health Emergency).

    When we entered April, cases worldwide exceeded 1 Million. While China had slowed the spreading of COVID-19. The world was beginning to experience the effects of the virus. The United States along with certain countries in Europe were going into Lockdown. I would like to call this period between roughly April and June the Global Lockdown Season. The world economy tanked and business, especially aviation business were having to see out the fog and almost cease all international flights.

The Light At The End of The Tunnel

    While we were camping out at home, scientists were working on producing a vaccine. One that was safe and easy to transport. The idea and the logistics of transporting COVID-19 vaccines seems easy at first, until you realise that vaccines must be kept at certain temperature, can only be effective in a certain period etc. You begin to realise the amount of work needed. I would like to shoutout to Wendover Productions for hi great video on COVID-19 vaccine logistics which I will link to in my second blog, Farren's Footnotes (Go check it out!) This is when I heard about a few different companies working on vaccines.

    Vaccines usually take around 8 years to produce. But due to the nature of COVID, scientists and others had to condense 8 years worth of work into around 1 year and less. This was where companies teamed up. Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company teamed up with BionTech SE and Fosun Pharma to create a vaccine. After months of hardwork and progress, Pfizer and BionTech announced on the 9th of November 2020, that their COVID-19 vaccine was 90%+ effective after testing over 43,500 people across 6 continents with no major safety concerns. But then, a challenger emerges, Moderna, another pharmaceutical company, along with the help of the U.S. Government, produced a vaccine with a 94.5% efficacy rate.

   

    December 2020, with the world struggling to contain COVID-19. The United Kingdom becomes the first country to approve of a COVID-19 vaccine. A few days later, Ms. Margaret Keenan, a 90-year old british grandmother becomes the world's first person to be inoculated with the vaccine. A milestone in the story of COVID-19. This created a chain of reaction to which countries around the world approved of vaccines. I am aware that I am not covering China's Sinovac Vaccine or Russia's Sputnik Vaccine (Cool Name though) or India's vaccine. That is because not as many countries has approved of those vaccines. However, are still important to mention as the United States isn't the sole produce of vaccines.

Opinion Corner

    Well, after one year of COVID-19, it looks like the virus is beginning to subside. I do hope that by December 2021, we can all have safe travel experiences. But I also hope that we enter a world where more than 50-60% of the population has been inoculated by the End of 2021 (Although this might not happen). But as of now, I feel that as a world, we as a population are being vaccinated at a quick and speedy way. In total around 3-4 million people are vaccinated per day or around 2430 people per minute. As of now, it is hard to see the impact of vaccinations just yet. But as the amount of people vaccinated increases, the difference will be become clearer. I feel that in a way, this is just the beginning. And one year on, the light is at the end of the tunnel, we are approaching it. Hopefully.

Links

    Wendover Productions Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byW1GExQB8

    COVID-19 Vaccine Data - https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

    COVID-19 Timeline - https://www.who.int/news/item/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19#:~:text=Officials%20confirm%20a%20case%20of,case%20outside%20of%20China.

    Wikipedia COVID-19 Page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic

    Worldometer COVID-19 Update LIVE - https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

    John Hopkins COVID-19 Update LIVE - https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Others

    > As this is an evolving situation, this article was written on the 12th of January 2020.

    > I know the article is not exactly one year since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic but it is close enough. (around 14-20 days)

    > Herd Immunity is a scientific term for vaccinations, resistance to the spread of an infectious disease within a population that is based on pre-existing immunity of a high proportion of individuals as a result of previous infection or vaccination.

    > COVID-19 has a recovery rate of 97% and a mortality rate of 3%.

    > The United States is, as of now, the country with the most amount of COVID-19 cases, with around 385,000+ deaths.

    > As of the 12th January 2021, the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has infected 91.3 Million cases and around 1.9 Million deaths.

Happy Reading!