A related shaila was asked by someone involved in covid vaccine research in 2020 – whether he should continue working on shabbos. The answer (I think from someone from YU) that he should not – (1) as he needs to rest at some point, he can as well do it on shabbos, (2) there are multiple companies working on this and why do you presume that you in particular are the person to develop the right one.
In retrospect, I do not fully understand the teshuva. Speed of vaccine development was such that there were multiple projects overlapping and dependent on each other. A lot of effort went into speeding things up. So, if someone was involved, he could have a reasonable case to work on those shabbatot when his project made a difference. A day was worth several thousand deaths.