If you’re not familiar with Covid-19, and all the controversies, tragedies, and depressions it brought with it, I don’t believe you. Since it’s arrival, many of us have suffered, whether that be physically because you contracted the virus, emotionally because one of your loved ones was affected, or mentally because of the constant arguments and isolation. Most countries were severely affected, which produced numbers worldwide of 107 million cases in total with 2.34 million of those cases resulting in death worldwide. Nationally, however, the United States contributed 26,939,515 of those cases and 463,659 of those deaths. With devastating numbers like this given by the CDC everyday, we’re all exhausted and begging to know when it will end.

    Towards the end of 2020, we finally heard news of the vaccine. Many danced and sang and sighed in relief at this news, because it meant that we could go back to functioning as we were before, we could go to movie theaters and schools and our jobs without bathing in hand sanitizer and refusing to shake hands with anybody outside of our household. In fact, if everything went to plan, there was hope we could be released from our homes and masks by summer of 2021.

    Everything is not going to plan. We’ve stopped dancing and singing and started sighing in resignation, returning back to our hermit homes with broken hearts. The distribution of this miracle vaccine is going much slower than expected, meaning that while we will get out someday, we can forget that day being in the very near future. In fact, since the vaccine requires two shots, which should be anywhere from 3 weeks to a month apart, depending on which vaccine you get, many people are missing the date or going too long to receive their second vaccination shot.

    However, according to a study done in Oxford University, the Astra-Veneca vaccine can cut transmissions of Covid-19 by two-thirds. The vaccine also helps to reduce severe disease, meaning less hospitalization. The study also shows that the vaccine can support a 12 week gap between shots, helping with the distribution and time crunch.