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Shares of Moderna surged by more than 16% in premarket trading Thursday after it announced that the Food and Drug Administration cleared its coronavirus vaccine for phase 2 trial, what the company called a “crucial step.” Moderna said it will begin phase 2 trials with 600 participants shortly and is finalizing plans for a phase 3 trial as early as this summer. “We are accelerating manufacturing scale-up and our partnership with Lonza puts us in a position to make and distribute as many vaccine doses of mRNA-1273 as possible, should it prove to be safe and effective,” CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement. (Feuer, 5/7)

As soon as the news of the novel coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, broke in early January, scientists at the historic University of Oxford began to work on a vaccine. Just three months later, the university announced promising results in monkeys and its vaccine, called ChAdOx1 nCoV019, was entering into the clinical trial phase. (Davies and Haddou, 5/7)

The availability of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus will likely play a key role in determining when Americans can return to life as usual. Whether a vaccine can end this pandemic successfully, however, depends on more than its effectiveness at providing immunity against the virus, or how quickly it can be produced in mass quantities. Americans also must choose to receive the vaccine. (Trujillo and Motta, 5/7)

Halfway through the school year, Myrtis Bradsher found herself paying close attention to a little girl called Kizzy. She always looked sharp, with ribbons knotted to her ponytails and socks that matched every outfit. But it was the way she rushed to help other fourth-graders with classwork that really stood out. “She had so much knowledge,” the teacher recalled. “She knew something about everything. ”In 25 years at Oak Lane Elementary School in rural Hurdle Mills, N.C., Bradsher had not seen a child like her. Bradsher was one of a few black teachers, and Kizzy was a rare black student. At a parent-teacher conference, Bradsher pushed to give the girl the advantages she felt she deserved. (Fears, 5/6)

As coronavirus sweeps across the nation, with some states seeing drops in numbers while hotspots emerge in others, experts are warning it's unlikely a vaccine will be ready this year... Vaccines to prevent coronavirus infections are racing through development at unprecedented speeds. But scientists won't know if the vaccines can prevent infection until April or May next year, said Dr. Mark Mulligan, director of the Vaccine Center at New York University's Langone Health. (Almasy and Karimi, 5/7)