THE ROLE OF A SCIENCE LABORATORY TECHNOLOGIST IN THE RACE FOR A VACCINE FOR COVID 19.

CHIEF IRIKEFE AKPORIDO (B.sc. SLT. BIOLOGICAL TECHNOLOGY -DELSU., M.sc PUBLIC HEALTH -U.S.A, F.NISLT, NISP, NEBOSH, APHA AND SOPHE MEMBERSHIP-#31682).

Vaccine developers are fast-tracking new constructs of various kinds—traditional vaccines, RNA vaccines, DNA vaccines, and others, in hopes of catching up with COVID-19, the deadly respiratory disease that already circles the globe. Developers are also interested in trying to trip up COVID-19 by repurposing vaccines already developed to counter pathogens like SARS-CoV-2. The worldwide scientific mobilization to produce a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine has become a race against time and an escalation in the heated rivalry among competing companies. All are scrambling toward the same goal: producing a vaccine against a viral menace that emerged in central China late last year and is now circling the globe.

As at today 12th May 2020, more than 2 million people around the world had become infected with covid 19, and unfortunately over 4 thousand of these infected people are from my home country NIGERIA., also global deaths had already breached the 100,000 mark, and over a 100 of them are also from my country NIGERIA according to report from the Nigeria Center For Disease Control (NCDC), with no end to the pandemic’s exponential growth in sight. It will be months, before laboratory technologist and public health officials say or known whether either of the vaccines entering clinical trials will be widely used to effectively immunize populations against SARS-CoV-2. Multiple other candidate vaccines are being studied by research teams globally, and several are set to be launched into clinical testing within the next few weeks to months.

Finding a safe and effective vaccine to prevent an increase in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection is an urgent laboratory technologist and a public health officer's priority. it is impossible to give a precise date when a vaccine will be ready for what will amount to tens of millions of immunizations. The types of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines under development worldwide are mostly genomic, DNA or RNA. However, the novel coronavirus differs in subtle, yet significant ways compared with previous members of the coronavirus family, SARS-CoV-1 and Middle East respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus (MERS-CoV). These viruses seem to primarily infect the lower respiratory tract, and lightly makes it difficult to spread between humans. But the new SARS-CoV-2, however, seems to replicate well in the upper respiratory tract, grows there quickly to high viral loads, and is able to spread between humans, who transmit it simply by droplets produced during breathing and coughing.

Therefore in conclusion, if all proceeds as planned, the federal government of Nigeria, through the institute of science laboratory technology, under the federal ministry of science and technology, should immediately make available an estimated sum of $9million or more to support science laboratory technology preclinical and clinical research work. This fund will be used to setup a vaccine development plant, which will accelerate vaccine production and testing in Nigeria.

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