--Prof. M. Vidyasagar, FRS-- COVID-19 pandemic is testing times for entire humanity and hopes are on science to provide predictions and solutions to wade through and curb this pandemic. Scientists across the world have joined forces and are trying to answer a variety of questions regarding the COVID-19 infection such as how does the infection spread?, how does the virus infect human cells? How can we stop the infection spread?

Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19), a severe respiratory disease caused by infection with the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus, has impacted almost every nation globally, making it a pandemic. More than 4.91 billion doses of vaccines have been administered worldwide, but the number of infections continues to rise. mRNA-based vaccines have been developed to bring the pandemic under control in some parts of the world. This brief review will give an overview of how mRNA vaccines work and what we can learn from the transcriptome of COVID-19 patients to identify the significant marker genes responsible for disease severity and mortality.

COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a grinding halt. Nations shut down the non-essential services to cut down the transmission of this new unknown disease. Whilst hospitalizations and mortality were the direct consequences of this undesirable pandemic phase, people suffered due to loss of jobs and for the poor, it became difficult even to make the two ends meet. Experts debated on whether the damage to the economy will be worse than the spread of infection and associated hospitalization and mortality.

Scientific evidence available on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the global outbreak of COVID-19, shows that the disease spreads through droplets launched from an infected person via coughing, sneezing, talking that land on a healthy person in close proximity (less than 6 feet). Epidemiological researchers have found social distancing measures to be very effective in containing the spread of virus in the absence of a proven cure or vaccine.