The COVID-19 vaccine race
Scientists express cautious optimism
In our world infectious diseases were of secondary importance to many people until this emerging microorganism helped to put them on the table. The future covid-19 vaccine is our best hope, although they are not free of risk. Never before have so many lives, livelihoods, and economies relied so heavily on a single health intervention, an international competition for a Covid-19 vaccine. The global effort for a vaccine represents the world’s largest exercise in scientific innovation in history, a kind of vaccine olympics, with countries putting huge amounts of money and effort into a single disease.
That said, the international community must understand that finding a vaccine is only the first step. To end this pandemic, billions of doses need to be produced affordably and made available to everyone, especially those in low-income countries, a feat never attempted before.
It is a race against time to save lives, it is a race for the discoverer’s glory. This time the competition is required to be of short distance, when historically the fight for a vaccine has been more similar to a marathon.
For the benefit of humanity, it is critical that neither national interests nor profits are what drive the effort for the largest vaccine deployment in history. It is evident that we are facing a challenge and an opportunity to reaffirm the world order. The “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine in the US has been singled out as “one of the greatest scientific and humanitarian achievements in history” and promises to procure 300 million vaccines by 2021. Simultaneously, Chen Wei, called Chinese goddess of vaccines, “he said, seeking to overshadow the US:” If China is the first to develop this weapon with its own intellectual property rights, it will demonstrate not only the progress of Chinese science and technology, but also our image as a great power. “ Germany made an unprecedented investment in “CureVac”, a company little known a while ago. The President Emmanuel Macron, invoking the “genius of Louis Pasteur”, announced his great support for the French Sanofi, remembering his country as “a great vaccinating country”. Crossing the English Channel, Great Britain celebrates the advances of scientists at its best university to study medicine: the University of Oxford.
How quickly will we have access to a viable vaccine? The process of producing vaccines is not making small sand castles on the beach. Under normal circumstances, the process of developing a vaccine has taken 5 to 10 years, with million-dollar investments that can range from 500 to more than 1.5 billion dollars. But in the case of the coronavirus, time is short. In science, nothing is final until it is verified and the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness validation process, despite being rushed, has not been completed.
At the moment, the portfolio of vaccines in development against covid-19 is around 200 candidates, being in different stages of development. In general, the trial of a vaccine has several phases. In the first phase, safety is tested, doses are determined, and any possible side effects are identified in a small number of people. In the second phase, safety is further explored and efficacy is investigated in larger groups. In phase 3, which few vaccines reach, the tests involve tens of thousands of people, to confirm and evaluate the effectiveness of the vaccine and to test if there are any rare side effects that could only be evidenced when administered to a larger population.
The demand will exceed the supply, so the more vaccines the better, therefore, we will need all the candidate vaccines that cross the goal. It should not be a race with a single winner but a shared award. So it is plausible not to put all the eggs in one basket.
There are other additional challenges to consider: the production plants have to continue developing other vaccines, the supply glass material to produce vials and syringes and how to fill them at maximum speed have to be solved. It is also vital to keep the cold chain at a temperature between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius, throughout the journey to their destination. The first vaccines will be used initially in health care personnel and the elderly, among other high-risk groups.
Among the vaccines with promising preliminary results and that seek to mark a milestone in history, we have the one from the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the AstraZeneca laboratory and multiple global alliances. Modern American-NIH, the top favorite in the Covid-19 vaccine race. The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is co-producing a vaccine with the help of the German company BioNTech and on the other hand there is the also the German biotech firm “CureVac”. These last three are using for the first time a new technology platform called messenger RNA.
Chinese vaccines CoronaVac from Sinovac-Biotech from Imperial College, Sinopharm and CanSino Biologics follow. Other candidates include: major pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson and Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline with Sanofi, and the Moscow Gamaleya Institute, among others.
WHO has designed the COVAX Center of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and implemented the “access accelerator to tools against COVID-19 (ACT) and the“ COVID-19 Rights Repository ”(CAP) to argue that vaccines and intellectual property must be universally available as global public goods, for low- and middle-income countries.
Vaccine acceptance depends on public trust , which is why several non-profit organizations are organizing to counter the possible misinformation of anti-vaccine groups, which compromise future mass vaccination.
The world has never needed a safe and effective vaccine as much as now. Hopefully all countries should consider that we are experiencing a global pandemic and not a regional epidemic.
Only an intelligent global vision without nationalisms can make this effort a success to be all safe. The first generation of coronavirus vaccines will be the fastest in history and science has proven to be up to the task, uniting efforts like never before in great international cooperation. Will the politicians be?
@santiagobacci
Originally published at www.elnacional.com on July 24, 2020. https://t.co/0HV4buQJhk?amp=1
