As coronavirus cases continue to shoot up across the globe, researchers in the US gave first shot to the first person in a test of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine on Monday. According to a report by the Associated Press (AP), scientists at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle begin an 'anxiously awaited first-stage study of a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed in record time'. Forty-three-year-old Jennifer Haller of Seattle, an operations manager at a tech company, received the injection inside an exam room.

Haller, the mother of two teenagers, termed it an "amazing opportunity" for her to "do something". The said 'vaccine', codenamed mRNA-1273, was developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Massachusetts-based biotechnology company Moderna Inc. More than 1,50,000 people have been infected worldwide by the virus which originated in China last December and has claimed the lives of over 6,500 people.