Scientists: victims and protagonists of the pandemic

The “Spanish flu” of 1918, associated with the First World War, meant a break in the access of women around the world to professions and jobs. The virus and the war wiped out the male population and many women began to work in the factories.

Medicine and the legal profession began to open up to women, and the process of feminization of education began. But without a doubt, the profession that most women capture was that of nursing.

More than a century later, to the piecemeal work of nurses and the rest of the female health workforce to stop the Covid-19 pandemic, we must add the work of several women scientists.

This Thursday is International Day of Women and Girls and Science. In the century that has passed between the two pandemics, women have embraced the scientific task with difficulty.

These problems were exacerbated during this pandemic and the quarantine. Many mother scientists have seen their production resented. Motherhood and childcare are obstacles in the career of scientists.

But there are also obstacles imposed by unequal access to places of hierarchy and discrimination in a very top-down system, with few mechanisms to report. Even obstacles arise much earlier, when science-oriented girls are not motivated to pursue these careers simply because of a gender issue.

Protagonists

However, in the midst of so much pain and sadness, this pandemic has featured many scientists who are generating significant breakthroughs to stop the coronavirus. Here is some:

Sarah gilbert. From the University of Oxford, he led the development of the vaccine now produced by AstraZeneca. She was the mother of triplets in 1998. “I only had 18 weeks of maternity leave. I had to take care of three premature babies and it was very stressful,” recalls the scientist.

Kathrin jansen. At the head of Pfizer, she is the leader of the vaccine that this company has developed with the German Biontech. But Jansen is already “famous” for having developed vaccines against the human papillomavirus and against the pneumococcus.

Akiko Iwasaki. This world-renowned immunologist has decided to restructure her lab to start studying Sars-Cov-2 in humans. I have never worked with human samples before. He showed why men develop more severe Covid-19 images. He is currently studying the long-term impact of the coronavirus.

There are also examples of Argentines:

Andrea Gamarnik. In 45 days, the team of this scientist from the Leloir Institute succeeded in developing the first national test for Covid-19, Covidar IgG, of which more than a million tests have already been carried out. Thanks to this tool, Gamarnik and his team have shown that 95% of people infected with the coronavirus develop antibodies 45 days later.

Mariana Viegas. He leads the Pais consortium of laboratories across the country for the genomic surveillance of Sars-Cov-2. Your task is essential to monitor the entry of the most dangerous variants.

Josefina Campos and Elsa Baumeister. These scientists coordinate the genetic surveillance work of the Anlis-Malbrán Institute. The lab bought CovidSeq equipment from Illumina, the only one in Latin America, which can sequence three thousand virus genomes in one day.

Woman’s name

In 1966, June Almeida did not have a university degree but was an expert in electron microscopy. In David Tyrrell’s lab, he began testing viruses that looked like influenza viruses, but were elusive under a microscope.

When June “managed to concentrate,” she discovered that these viruses had a halo around them that resembled the solar corona. Hence its name: coronavirus.