Americans Begin to Receive COVID-19 Vaccinations

COVID-19 has been a global pandemic since early in 2019. It is over a year old and has killed over 2 million people, worldwide. It is one of the most infectious diseases in history, requiring several lockdowns and quarantines worldwide. However, hope finally may be coming to the world. Vaccines, developed by the companies Pfizer and Moderna, have been released and are being implemented all around the world. Is the nightmare finally over? Or is it not as effective as it may seem?

There are two COVID vaccines, one developed by Pfizer and the other developed by Moderna. These vaccines have been in development for as long as COVID has been a problem, and it took just under a year to develop. These two are just a small portion of the 57 vaccines that were in development in order to try and cure COVID. Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines are actually just the beginning of developed vaccines. There are several types of vaccines developed by several companies, developed by Sinopharm, Sinovac, the Gamaleya Research Institute, the University of Oxford, and Astra-Zeneca. The differences between these vaccines are esoteric at best, but the ones developed by Pfizer and Moderna will be the most widely used.

Various countries have already begun vaccination, including in the US. In New Jersey, around 2.63% of the population is already vaccinated, which is around 200,000 people. Some places have begun mass vaccination, i.e most of Europe and parts of the Middle East. Some places have emergency authorization for the COVID vaccine, i.e the US, Russia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile, and more of the Middle East. Despite this, most of the world has not begun the process of vaccination, with the most notable example being Africa. This is most likely due to poverty and lower GDP in comparison to the rest of the world. Other places including Australia, Central Asia, Ukraine, and Southeast Asia have also not begun vaccination.