Measles infected people for 1,500 years, killing more than one million people annually during the 20th century alone, before John Enders and Thomas Peebles isolated the virus in 1954 and developed a vaccine nine years later. Four decades onward again, the disease was finally eliminated in North America.
But for every disease caused by a virus, such as measles, mumps and rubella, where a vaccine was found, there’s HIV, malaria, hepatitis C and Zika, for which a vaccine remains elusive.
So what about COVID-19?
Despite the hope surrounding finding a vaccine to halt the pandemic, top World Health Organization official Michael Ryan gave the world a reality check at a press conference on May 14 when he suggested that “this virus may never go away.”