The Vaccine Was Fast. Here's How to Make it Faster By Allison Shelley The most ambitious vaccine deployment in history promises to stop a pandemic that has already claimed 1.67 million lives. But what if a vaccine for COVID-19 had been available sooner, say as early as March? It's a question raised by Florian Krammer, PhD, a microbiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. In a just-published commentary in the journal Cell, he reflects on the loss of life and says vaccines now will make a significant impact on ending the pandemic, but were needed much earlier.