Inside the COVID-19 Vaccine Project

Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Program at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, joins Ash Bennington to explain what the Department of Defense's coronavirus vaccine research project is doing to combat the pandemic. Dr. Modjarrad breaks down the different factors that have culminated to increase the difficulty of creating a vaccine. He shares details on the vaccine that his research group is creating with nanoparticles that bind to the virus itself. Finally, he answers questions like, "how long will vaccine deployment take?", "what effects do mutations have on the success of vaccines?", and "how does one protect themself from COVID-19?" from the perspective of an infectious disease doctor on the inside of the scientific effort to mitigate this deadly pandemic. Filmed on July 8, 2020.