It wasn't a one-off, it has accelerated the development of mRNA vaccines. This is a new type of vaccine that will be applied to other diseases as well.
The new technology is super exciting though, so lets give the article that. We're hardly so stagnant that a single technological breakthrough is unheard of in the last 50 years and signals an end of stagnancy.
I feel that you're splitting hairs here. The article mentions both in adjacent paragraphs.
And the fact that the vaccine was developed faster was also not a one-off, this is a feature of mRNA vaccines. Future vaccines can be manufactured with the same blueprint by just swapping out the mRNA sequence.