Finally, there’s a vaccine for malaria. Numerous countries are confronting a double pandemic. They face a fight against malaria while additionally battling against the coronavirus.

The illness is brought about by a minuscule, mosquito-borne parasite that contaminated 229 million individuals only two years prior. With clinic assets consumed by COVID patients, numerous malaria patients can’t get the treatment they need.

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States showed that there were over 500,000 casualties. However worldwide, the yearly amount of casualties lost to malaria have exceeded this number just until recently.

Recently, amongst all of the advances for COVID vaccines in recent months, trials of a new vaccine for malaria, R21, were just announced. 450 children were tested in a trial which then showed the vaccine to be between 74% to 77% effective in preventing the disease.

Alvin Zeng, a WJPS junior said, “I think it’s great that amid the COVID pandemic we found a cure to a whole different one as well.”

Another WJPS junior, Somiah Singh said, “It’s great that those people affected by the disease can finally get treated.”

“Malaria medication” by World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0