For Prof Ooi, an infectious diseases specialist, rushing to develop a COVID-19 vaccine within months, instead of years, was like “building a plane while flying it”.
His team was initially tasked with studying dengue, but pivoted to being part of the mammoth effort to bring in effective vaccines for Singapore.
“You’re trying to learn: What would it take for a good vaccine to work against COVID-19? There’s data coming out from labs, some of it is really good, some of it isn’t so good … Whilst your own experiments are running at the same time. So, there is a lot of adjustment, a lot of finetuning as you go along,” said the Duke-NUS Medical School professor.
In the COVID-19 White Paper which was debated in parliament in March, Singapore’s vaccine strategy was highlighted as an area the country did well in.
What were the experts’ biggest takeaways from the pandemic?
For Prof Ooi, it came down to the need to have “deep pockets” in terms of vaccine development.