WHO urges countries to gamble on shared vaccine search
GENEVA, Switzerland — The WHO on Thursday urged countries to invest billions of dollars in searching for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments — calling it a snip compared to the vast economic cost of the coronavirus crisis.
The World Health Organization insisted it was a smarter bet than the trillions of dollars being thrown at handling the consequences of the global pandemic.
The UN agency's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pleaded for investment into the WHO-led ACT-Accelerator programme, which aims to share global research and development, manufacturing and procurement in a bid to beat COVID-19.
Citing the International Monetary Fund's predictions of the pandemic wiping out $12 trillion over two years, he urged countries to spend on shared solutions.
"It's the best economic stimulus the world can invest in," Tedros told a virtual press conference.
Funding the ACT-Accelerator, with $31.3 billion needed immediately, "will cost a tiny fraction in comparison to the alternative, where economies retract further and require continued fiscal stimulus packages".
He said spreading the risk and sharing the reward is a better bet than the option some countries have taken, of going it alone in backing one of the dozens of vaccines in development.
"Picking individual winners is an expensive, risky gamble," he said,
"The development of vaccines is long, complex, risky and expensive The vast majority of vaccines in early development fail."
Tedros said multiple vaccine candidates, of different types, were needed in order to identify the best one.
Access to the winner
Russia on Tuesday declared itself the first country to approve a vaccine, even though final stage testing involving more than 2,000 people was only due to start on Wednesday.
Bruce Aylward, who heads up the ACT-Accelerator, said the WHO was still awaiting more details from Moscow.
"We're currently in conversation with Russia to get additional information, understand the status of that product, the trials that have been undertaken, and then what the next steps might be," he said.
The WHO says 168 candidate vaccines are being worked on around the world, of which 28 have progressed to being tested on humans.
Nine of those 28 -- not including the Russian vaccine -- are in the ACT-Accelerator programme.
WHO access to medicines chief Mariangela Simao said that with so many vaccine candidates being worked on, backing just one or two could not be the best bet.
"We don't know which one will be the front-runner, which one will actually prove to be safe and effective," she said.
"We are encouraging countries to join a global facility, because you will have access to more candidates, and you have a better chance to have concrete access... to procure one of the successful candidates."
The European Union said earlier Thursday that it has reserved up to 400 million doses of a potential new coronavirus vaccine being developed by US giant Johnson & Johnson.
On July 31, the European Commission said it had reserved 300 million doses of another potential vaccine being developed by French firm Sanofi.
Eye of the storm?
The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 750,000 people and infected more than 20.6 million worldwide since it first emerged in China in December, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources.
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan warned that only a small proportion of the global population had actually been exposed to the virus.
"This virus has a long way to burn, if we allow it," he said.
"The vast majority of people remain susceptible to this infection.
"We may be in the eye of the storm and we don't know it."
Meanwhile Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, said there were examples from some countries suggesting that an individual may have been reinfected the virus, but "its still not confirmed".
She said experts would need to look for false positive or negative cases, immune response after infection, and sequencing.
Pharma giants Sanofi and GSK said on July 29, 2020, that they have agreed to supply Britain with up to 60 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine. The agreement covers a vaccine candidate developed by France's Sanofi in partnership with the UK's GSK and is subject to a "final contract."
This thread collects some of the major developments in the search for a vaccine to ease the new coronavirus pandemic. (Main photo by AFP/Joel Saget)
As negotiations towards a new pandemic treaty pick up pace, observers warn of watered-down efforts to ensure equitable access to the medical products needed to battle future Covid-like threats.
Shaken by the pandemic, the World Health Organization's 194 member states are negotiating an international accord aimed at ensuring countries are better equipped to deal with the next catastrophe, or even prevent it altogether.
The process is still in the early stages, with the aim of reaching an agreement by May 2024.
But critics warn that revisions being made to the preliminary negotiating text are weakening the language -- notably in a key area aimed at preventing the rampant inequity seen in access to vaccines and other medical products during the Covid pandemic.
"I think it is a real step backwards," Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told AFP. — AFP
Africa's first mRNA vaccine hub is ceremonially launched on Thursday to acclaim from the UN's global health chief, who hailed it as a historic shift to help poor countries gain access to life-saving jabs.
The facility was set up in the South African city of Cape Town in 2021 on the back of the success of revolutionary anti-Covid vaccines introduced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.
"This precious project... will bring a paradigm shift in addressing the serious problem we faced, the equity problem, during the pandemic, so (that) it's not repeated again," World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tells a media briefing to mark the inauguration. — AFP
China has approved its first locally developed messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine against Covid-19, its manufacturer said Wednesday, months after the relaxation of strict Covid-zero regulations sparked a surge in cases.
The vaccine, developed by CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd, has been approved for "emergency use" by Beijing's health regulator, the company said in a statement.
It showed high efficacy in a trial in which it was used as a booster shot for people who have been given other types of vaccines, the company added, without offering further details. — AFP
COVID-19 vaccine maker Novavax raises doubts about its ability to continue its business, announcing plans to cut spending after struggles in rolling out its coronavirus jab.
Shares of Novavax plummeted 25 percent in extended trading, after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates.
While the firm should have enough money to fund operations, the situation is "subject to significant uncertainty," it says in a statement. — AFP
The protection against Covid-19 from being previously infected lasts at least as long as that offered by vaccination, one of the largest studies conducted on the subject says.
Ten months after getting Covid, people still had an 88% lower risk of reinfection, hospitalisation and death, according to the study published in the Lancet journal.
That makes this natural immunity "at least as durable, if not more so" than two doses of Pfizer or Moderna's vaccines, the study says.
The authors nevertheless emphasized that their findings should not discourage vaccination, which remains the safest way to get immunity. — AFP
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