Meet the Black, Female Scientist Behind the Covid-19 Vaccine
Tags: Coronavirus, Science, Healthcare, Vaccines, Black Women

Meet the Black, Female Scientist Behind the Covid-19 Vaccine

Corbett’s team worked with Moderna to develop one of two vaccines with an efficacy rate of more than 90% beceroj285 Dec 14, 2020·4 min read

Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A 34-year-old Black woman has been one of the leading players in developing a vaccine to help end the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr. Kizzmekia “Kizzy” Corbett is one of the scientists running the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Coronavirus Vaccines and Immunopathogenesis Team. Her team at NIH has worked with the pharmaceutical company, Moderna, to develop one of two vaccines with an efficacy rate of more than 90%.

Dr. Corbett has been a visible figure in the race to develop and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine since the beginning of 2020. Before the pandemic swept the U.S., she was one of a handful of NIH scientists to meet with President Trump to discuss the impending Covid-19 crisis in early March. As ABC News reports, the young scientist made a deliberate decision to take on a more public-facing role in the NIH team.

“I felt that it was important to do that because the level of visibility that it would have to younger scientists and also to people of color who have often worked behind the scenes and essentially [who have] done the dirty work for these large efforts toward a vaccine,” said Dr. Corbett.

Though Black, Latinx, and Indigenous Americans comprise the hardest-hit demographics of the Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S., vaccine hesitancy remains high among Black Americans in particular. A recent survey co-sponsored by the NAACP and UNIDOS US found that only 14% of Black Americans trust that a vaccine will be safe, and 18% trust that it will be effective. The study attributes this lack of trust to Black Americans’ “deep historical traumas” at the hands of the government, and from the overall health care system.

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Despite her leading role in developing a Covid-19 vaccine, Dr. Corbett is sympathetic to Black Americans’ vaccine-related concerns.

“I would say to people who are vaccine-hesitant that you’ve earned the right to ask the questions that you have around these vaccines and this vaccine development process,” said Dr. Corbett in an interview with CNN.

She continued, “Trust, especially when it has been stripped from people, has to be rebuilt in a brick-by-brick fashion. And so, what I say to people firstly is that I empathize, and then secondly is that I’m going to do my part in laying those bricks. And I think that if everyone on our side, as physicians and scientists, went about it that way, then the trust would start to be rebuilt.”

On Monday, December 14, the U.S. distributed its very first doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine — a mere three days after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued emergency authorization for the vaccine. The Moderna vaccine that Dr. Corbett helped develop is expected to receive an emergency authorization from the FDA later this month.