COVID-19 is an infectious disease which is caused by a recently discovered Coronavirus (Sars-CoV-2). This new virus and disease weren’t known before the outbreak started in China. As COVID-19 continues to spread, with the number of infections (at the time of writing) standing around 2 million people and the number of deaths at 138,000. Nations across the world stay in lockdown, to try and slow down the rate of infection. The world is at risk from the greatest recession since the 1930s. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the global economy will contract by 3% this year. The IMF’s chief economist, Gita Gopinath, said that the pandemic could knock $9 trillion off global GDP over the next two years.
With both hundreds of thousands of lives and the world economy at risk, the race is on to find a vaccine.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are dozens of potential vaccines that are in various stages of development. However, it could still be 12 to 18 months before it is available to the public. This is an accelerated timeline as usually, it takes longer to produce a new vaccine.
Some of the vaccine candidates include one from Moderna Therapeutics. They shipped the first batch of their vaccine just 42 days after the genetic sequence of COVID-19 was released by Chinese researchers in January. They were able to do this so shortly after the release of the genetic sequence due to a relatively new method that does not require growing huge amounts of the virus. Their technology packs the vaccine with mRNA, “using the sequence of the virus, not by working on the virus itself”. This speeds up the development process across science, manufacturing and clinical phases.
Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline have stated that they will work together to produce a vaccine, the two companies will “combine innovative technologies to develop an adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine” and “Candidate vaccine expected to enter clinical trials in the second half of 2020 and, if successful, to be available in the second half of 2021”. The advantage of this collaboration is that it brings together two of the world’s largest producers of vaccines, so it’ll benefit from the expertise and a large production scale.
Vaccine development and testing follows a standard set of steps and normally takes several years (sometimes taking >10 years). Vaccines are developed, tested and regulated as vigorously as other drugs, sometimes even more thoroughly tested if you consider the number of human subjects involved in vaccine trials. In the US, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) has accelerated clinical trials and took steps to speed the development and manufacturing of vaccines to prevent Covid-19.
Considering the extraordinary humanitarian and financial challenges of the pandemic, it is important that global access to COVID-19 vaccines is a priority. Any vaccine that is developed should be affordable to the public and widely available in all countries. Doing this while creating a vaccine that is safe and effective will prove to be a huge challenge, although like all challenges it can also be a valuable learning experience.
#COVID19 #Vaccine #Pandemic #Economy
Sources:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52273988
https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses
https://time.com/5790545/first-covid-19-vaccine/
https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-against-covid-19
https://www.sanofi.com/en/media-room/press-releases/2020/2020-04-14-13-00-00