Science diplomacy is essential for Nepal in developing connectivity and long-term strategic alliances with international scientific communities.

With now almost four months, the corona pandemic has resulted in over 100 thousand deaths. The modeling based on a number of tests and recovery data to date indicates some positive trend of recovery but it has not been very effective. The world focused on isolation measures, developing drugs and vaccines but various other options. Let me talk about those options. Vaccination is an ultimate cure as it helps the body to make an antibody to fight virus attacks. Scientists were able to quickly sequence the genetic materials of COVID-19 as early as in January and manipulate its gene sequence to develop a vaccine. A vaccine developed earlier for corona epidemics—SARS in 2002-04 and Mers in 2012—was never used as the virus was contained. These vaccines are now being trialed against COVID-19 by Novavax company and ready for human trials this spring. A biotech firm Moderna also claims that their vaccine will go for clinical trial soon in Australia. China is also on the race to try its own vaccine for clinical trials. A vaccine needs testing in animals first and then in humans in three-phase trials for approval. Thus it could cost several hundred million dollars.