Even though, at times, it might seem a bit too strenuous, the truth is our lives pretty much need challenges. Without these challenges, we don’t see any learning curve whatsoever, and that sets us up for a situation where our prospects of achieving new things go on a steep decline. In fact, if you look through the world’s history, you can observe gazillion examples of how certain challenges actually forced us to up our game and get something even better than what we initially happened to target. A prominent part of this pack has been technology. As ingenious as it looked right out of the gate, technology’s stock took a fair amount of time before it reached the heights that it did. The said jump, of course, turned up in conjunction with the way this creation settled around. For instance, our first few attempts at integrating technology across several areas proved to be somewhat limited in their nature, but once we cracked the code and had a full view of its potential, the entire horizons changed in a blink. Now, while it’s hard to move beyond technology’s impact on a holistic scale, we must acknowledge what it did from a more granular standpoint. The creation used a sell that was strong enough for convincing every major sector out there to rework its identity. This sell was tailored according to the needs of each industry, and when the medical sector’s turn came about, it became a simple possibility of having a healthier world. However, like us, even technology would need specific challenges to grow, and it was presented with its biggest one during Covid 19 pandemic. So far, the creation has done a great job in navigating an unfamiliar reality, but it looks like there is still some work to do.
Following the identification of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, pharmaceutical companies have officially started their research to develop a new vaccine, if needed. Named as Omicron by World Health Organization, the new variant is reported to be far more devastating than any of the previous ones, but organizations continue to wait on concrete data before making any moves. Pfizer and BioNtech have jointly announced that in case the variant is found to exceed their existing vaccine’s capabilities, they will be able to develop a new antidote within just 100 days.
Apart from these two, Moderna is also trialling its FDA-approved vaccine booster against Omicron. The initial low-dose test has already failed to provide any encouraging information, so the company is currently giving it a go with a higher dose.
“From the beginning, we have said that as we seek to defeat the pandemic, it is imperative that we are proactive as the virus evolves. The mutations in the Omicron variant are concerning, and, for several days, we have been moving as fast as possible to execute our strategy to address this variant,” said Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna.
If preliminary details are to be believed, Omicron has more than 30 mutations on the spike protein that binds to human cells. Furthermore, despite only being a recent discovery, the variant is already known to be present in a dozen countries.
