While the Mother's Day mass recognized mothers of all kinds, many parents here are blessed to have their children thanks to Saint Joseph's Center adoption program.
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Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020, scientists and researchers around the world went to work to develop vaccines to fight SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease. On Dec. 11, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization allowing Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine to be distributed in the U.S. A week later, a second vaccine, developed by Moderna, received the same FDA emergency use authorization.
The Current spoke with Dr. Scott Grafton, M.D., UC Santa Barbara’s COVID-19 coordinator and a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, and Chuck Samuel, the Charles A. Storke Professor and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, about how the vaccines work, how effective they are and how scientists were able to make them available so quickly.