The race towards a Covid-19 vaccine began with a high-stakes phone call. On January 11, 2020, Eddie Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney, called Zhang Yongzhen. The Chinese scientist was holding a critical piece of data: the very first blueprint of the genetic code of the coronavirus.
“I called Zhang to ask if I could release the sequence,” Holmes said. “I had been trying to release as much data as possible, but he was facing constraints.”
Zhang was on a plane in China waiting to take off and the cabin crew were urging him to hang up. He asked Holmes for a moment to think: the pandemic was about to erupt but the Chinese government had forbidden the publication of information about the
