In these past years, COVID has been part of our daily life, using masks and keeping social distancing has become the new “normality”, we all wanted this stage of not being able to see our friends, family and living with fear to come to an end. Later in the year, we heard about vaccines coming and everyone was super excited, one of those is the Oxford COVID vaccine that saved millions of lives. Now that our lives are returning slowly to what they were before COVID, we can only thank the heroes that saved so many lives and fought against COVID. What better way to do it than at Wimbledon Center court?
Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert was invited with some colleagues to the Royal Box on Monday for the first day of Wimbledon, in which the number one tennis player of the world, Novak Djokovic, was playing his first match of the tournament. Before the match started the announcer paid tribute to the important work done by Dame Sarah Gilbert and their colleagues in developing the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. It is important to remember that this vaccine was one of the first Covid vaccines to be approved for use in the UK and later on around the world.
Not only were tributes paid on the court, but also outside of it. Prime minister Boris Johnson and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge also thanked Dame Sarah Gilbert and her team for their incredible job developing the vaccine and saving Lifes.
Dame Sarah Gilbert is a British Vaccinologists that is also a professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford. She specializes in developing vaccines against influenza and emerging viral pathogens and has always been involved in developing vaccines for worldwide pathologies such as the universal flu vaccine and the influenza vaccine, and now Covid. She has been awarded the Albert Medal and appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire due to her services developing the Covid-19 vaccine.
Dame Sarah Gilbert and her team are heroes not only for the UK but also for the world, the vaccine developed by them has reached several countries and saved millions of lives. They deserve to be recognized for their services to humanity and Wimbledon organizers could not do a better job at paying a tribute to them creating such a special moment.
