The latest surge in COVID-19 cases is widening one of the biggest inequities of the pandemic era: The gap between nations that have messenger RNA vaccines and those that don¡¯t.
The cutting-edge technology, which made its debut during the pandemic, has proven more effective than any other in staving off infections and serious illness from the coronavirus. Yet just a handful of facilities in the U.S. and Western Europe account for almost all of the world¡¯s mRNA vaccine supply ¡ª leaving many countries in a desperate race to catch up.
From South Korea to Indonesia and South Africa, governments are seeking to set up mRNA production and develop other collaborations in the space, but they¡¯re also realizing it could take them years to master the new science, leaving their countries reliant on less potent vaccines that potentially expose them to repeated waves of COVID-19 and delay their economies from reopening.
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