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The appearance of

SARS-CoV-2

has been a litmus test for Science.

On the one hand, the emergence of the new coronavirus serves as a reminder that, despite all the progress and all the knowledge accumulated so far, the natural world will always reserve situations that are beyond our control.

At the same time, the response against the pandemic has meant an unprecedented global effort: today the

PubMed

virtual library

includes

more than 74,000 scientific articles

related to Covid-19, more than double those that exist on other diseases that have plagued humanity for centuries, such as polio, cholera or measles.

This effort has resulted in new diagnostic tests, which can detect the virus in a matter of minutes, in detailed genetic information about the virus, in large open data sets that allow us to follow the evolution of the pandemic in detail, and in vaccines developed in Record time.

In this context of a pandemic, the journal

Nature

has selected the ten protagonists who have marked Science this year.

"In a year in which Covid-19 has affected the whole world, we have selected the people who have taken part in some of the major scientific events of 2020," explains Rich Monastersky, editor-in-chief of the magazine.

Among them is

Anthony Fauci

, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases in the US.

Fauci has been the most visible face of the federal government's response to the coronavirus, "providing reliable information to a concerned population," according to

Nature

, "while also questioning the misinformation spread by President Donald Trump."

The magazine also wanted to vindicate the role of another of the usual targets of Trump's attacks, the director general of the World Health Organization,

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

.

It highlights the ability of the Ethiopian president to "mobilize countries to respond to the threat of the new coronavirus, while facing intense criticism against the organization for managing the crisis."

Outside of the strictly scientific sphere, the work of New Zealand Prime Minister

Jacinda Ardern is praised

for her "swift and decisive actions, which kept her country relatively safe from the coronavirus, while keeping the trust of citizens".

The successful management of the pandemic, focused on the closure of borders and the application of quarantines, managed to eliminate two waves of Covid-19 on the southern island and was endorsed by the New Zealand population in the last elections.

"Together, the stories of these ten people illuminate some of the greatest scientific and social challenges the world has faced," sums up Monastersky.

The other faces of the pandemic

The magazine notes the work of two Chinese scientists during the first weeks of the pandemic.

Epidemiologist

Li Lanjuan was

quick to acknowledge the severity of the outbreak in Wuhan "and convinced the central government to close the city before a national holiday, which helped slow the spread."

An expert in infectious diseases, Lanjuan already participated in the prevention against SARS in 2003 and has now become one of the central figures in the fight against the current pandemic in her country;

it moved to Wuhan in early January and remained there until the broadcast could finally be controlled.

The other key personality is that of virologist

Zhang Yongzhen

, whose team was the first to decipher the RNA sequence of the virus - just ten days after the first cases were reported - and who worked to achieve global access to information from via the virological.org discussion forum.

The effort to achieve a vaccine has also been recognized through

Kathrin Jansen

, head of research and development at Pfizer.

Jansen leads a team "that has given the world hope by accelerating the development of a vaccine through clinical trials in a record time of 210 days."

In this same line.

The test, trace and follow-up strategy is praised, which has allowed countries like Uruguay to register mortality data much lower than those of their neighbors.

The virologist

Gonzalo Moratorio

and his colleagues were key in this regard, by "developing diagnostic tests that helped their country avoid a torrent of infections and deaths."

Social activism, climate science and the fight against dengue

The list outlines some of the challenges the scientific community must face going forward.

That is why it includes the American cosmologist

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

, for her efforts in "raising awareness of systemic racism in scientific institutions against blacks, after George Floyd was assassinated by the Minneapolis police."

An expert in areas such as particle astrophysics, the study of the early universe and quantum gravity, Prescod-Weinstein has also become a prominent figure in recent years for her activism and for denouncing biases such as "white empiricism" that predominates today in the scientific community.

Although climate science has been overshadowed by other disciplines, the German

Verena Mohaupt

, head of logistics for the expedition MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary Observatory on the Drift of the Study of the Arctic Climate) is also present.

It is a way of recognizing the international mission that has had 300 researchers who embarked on the Polarstern icebreaker throughout the year, including the harshest months of the polar winter.

As head of logistics, Mohaupt has been in charge of keeping them "safe from polar bears, extreme cold and themselves while their ship was trapped in sea ice for a year."

The magazine did not want to forget the fight against other infectious diseases either and included Indonesian researcher

Adi Utarini

, who this year led a pioneering trial against dengue infections, using specially selected mosquitoes to block the transmission of the virus responsible for this disease. .

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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