The ultimate “exit strategy” from the coronavirus pandemic would be a vaccine. Despite some modestly encouraging early signals and some hopelessly optimistic media coverage, an effective vaccine is by no means a certainty, and will in any case take many months, if not years, to develop.
Donald Trump, for once, was right to direct research by the large American pharma groups and research institutes to proceed at “warp speed”, (despite getting them distracted by brief inquiries into the therapeutic qualities of bleach and hydroxychloroquine). Some 80 sets of researchers around the world are working on developing a vaccine. Trials run by a team from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, and testing of another by Moderna in the US, look promising.
Key to the success of developing, manufacturing and distributing any vaccine is close international collaboration. This is why the international (remote) vaccine summit is now of greater importance. Hosted by the prime minister and arranged before the pandemic, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) summit aimed to raise £6bn from national governments, international bodies, charities, foundations and companies to fund a range of vaccines for the poorest children in the poorest countries in the world, for diseases such as meningitis, whooping cough, hepatitis and diphtheria.
The organisers of the GAVI conference also hoped to push for greater international cooperation on Covid-19. Key to this was the realisation that such an infectious virus does not respect national boundaries and, realistically, may never be fully eradicated, and could mutate. No country will ever be able to peel itself off from coronavirus indefinitely, which is why this is a global struggle.
As the chief executive of GAVI, Dr Seth Berkley, puts it so succinctly: “Nobody is safe until everyone is safe.” Even if a country could somehow make its citizens free of the disease, they would still be affected by the economic and other disruption around the world. This is not a time for “America First” or for any country to try to buy up vaccine supplies on an exclusive basis.
GAVI has some influential members, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, backing research and urging companies to work together. If a coronavirus vaccine is developed, they are pushing for it to be rushed into production as a generic drug on a global scale – a not for profit treatment manufactured in billions of doses. “The pharma industry at its absolute best,” as Bill Gates calls it. Bodies such as GAVI can ensure that the pharma companies have sufficient advanced orders to get production started without delay.
Perhaps it will prove inevitable that money will talk, and poorer countries will find it hard to secure vaccine supplies. This is unfair but also unsustainable if outbreaks of the disease persist in lower income countries. The priority distribution of the vaccine should logically be granted to frontline staff in hospitals and social care wherever they are, and for those groups known to be more vulnerable.
Yet, even if a vaccine is mass produced and widely available it may not succeed in producing the required “herd immunity” unless it gains mass acceptance. For whatever reason, the anti-vaxxers are forming their own informal but lethal alliance with the conspiracy theorists, cooking up fantastical notions about any possible vaccine. It is not just the coronavirus itself that will need to be “knocked on the head” in Boris Johnson’s words, but some lethal man-made ideas as well.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
0Comments