Within days of his sequencing breakthrough, Zhang’s results were posted on the website virological.org – giving the world its first inkling of a pathogen that has since killed more than 1.5 million people and convulsed nations with lockdowns, travel restrictions and economic disruption… His team’s early unravelling of the structure of the virus responsible for Covid-19 – as the disease was later named – gave science a chance to fight back. The result was an international effort that [recently saw] a vaccine for the disease administered to the public for the first time.
It is an extraordinary achievement. To go from the discovery of a deadly new virus to the creation of a tested vaccine that can block its effects in less than a year is unprecedented in scientific history.