A VACCINE is a weakened, killed, or modified virus or bacteria injected into a person – who is not ill – with the aim of stimulating that person’s body to produce anti-bodies that would fight the real disease should it come.
In the Philippines, it is now standard procedure to vaccinate children against the common children’s diseases of diptheria, pertussis, and tetanus. A cure, on the other hand, is administered to one who is already ill of a disease.
In the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, scores of research teams are now a working in search of either a vaccine or a cure.
About 70 potential vaccines are now under development by teams of biologists and other scientists around the world, many in the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Israel.
President Duterte has called on our own Filipino scientists to join the search for an effective vaccine, offering a ₱50-million reward.
Once an effective vaccine is discovered, it would be injected into millions around the world. They would develop anti-bodies that would fight any invading virus. The idea is that the body, upon being infected with the vaccine, will build up its own anti-bodies and fight off any COVID-19 infection.
The World Health Organizations, however, has received reports, which it is now investigating, that 91 COVID-19 patients in South Korea who had recovered from the disease, were found to have fallen ill again. In other words, they had not developed any anti-bodies to ward off any new infection. That would raise questions about the effectivity of any anti-COVID-19 vaccine.
There is indeed so much that is unknown about this virus that is now sweeping around the world. It is generally accepted that the virus can travel in droplets in the breath of an infected person. Thus it is best to keep one’s distance from other people and to wear a facemask. The ongoing lockdown – enhanced community quarantine – in Metro Manila and Luzon seeks to achieve this social distancing.
The world’s scientists are continuing their search for a vaccine that can be administered to protect people from infection. But it is the search for a cure that carries the hopes of those already afflicted. They now number nearly three million around the world, over 7,000 of them in the Philippines.
