Top 10 Science Stories Of 2021

Thrilling Science and technology discoveries, hurdles in the fight against Covid and Tadvancements in space exploration defined the past year

The Covid-19 vaccine

Last year the biggest science story of the year was that scientists developed two mRNA Covid vaccines in record time. The Covid-19 vaccine has now become available for children as young as five. The fastest vaccine development-to deployment period before this was the Mumps vaccine in the 1960s and that took four years.

Only 8 percent of individuals in low-income countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and a WHO Africa report from this fall said that on that continent, less than 10 percent of countries would hit the goal of vaccinating at least 40 percent of their citizens by the end of the year. Globally, less than 60 percent of the population has been vaccinated. The holes in vaccination coverage will allow the virus to continue to kill a large number of individuals, and allow an environment where possibly other dangerous variants can emerge.

WHO recommends groundbreaking malaria vaccine for children

In October, the World Health Organization approved the first vaccine against malaria. The approval was not only a first for that disease, but also for any parasitic disease. The recommendation was based on results from an ongoing pilot programme in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that has reached more than 800 000 children since 2019. WHO recommends that in the context of comprehensive malaria control the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine be used for the prevention of P. falciparum malaria in children living in regions with moderate to high transmission as defined by WHO. RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine should be provided in a schedule of 4 doses in children from 5 months of age for the reduction of malaria disease and burden.