Focus on gene vaccines in fight against COVID-19 But we will certainly also look back on a time when a huge medical advancement was achieved in a very short time — with mRNA, a whole new vaccine concept is being developed. It should be noted that "We now know much, much more about this virus, how it develops, what makes it tick, and we can now produce an adequate vaccine much more quickly than we could six to nine months ago," said Eichler. In other words, we are far from starting from square one. Never before in history have there been such efforts to find a viable drug for an emergent disease so quickly.