https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k78mz9/how-mrna-vaccine-platforms-unlocks-the-potential-for-universal-vaccines

A few hours: That’s how long it took BioNTech co-founder Uğur Şahin to design a vaccine for COVID-19 in January of 2020.

The virus was hardly what we know it now to be at the time: It was beginning to spread from its epicenter in Wuhan, China, but only a smattering of cases had been located in Europe and North America. On January 11, the genetic sequence for the virus was made public; within days, manufacturers had vaccines ready to test.