Seven is a magical number from the Seven Wonders of the World to the biblical seventh day on which God rested after creating the world.
And seven is turning out to be pretty magical when it comes to vaccines too. That’s the number of potential vaccine candidates which Kate Bingham, the former head of the government’s Vaccine Taskforce ordered last summer while trials were still taking place.
Bingham’s bet on the seven – out of 160 different vaccines being developed around the world – is looking more extraordinary by the day. Three have been approved by the medical regulator – the Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxford/AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines – while two have been shown to be highly effective – the Janssen and Novavax vaccines – and hopefully will be approved over the next few weeks.
