The very urgent need for a vaccine for Covid-19 has finally brought together a number of international entities in an unprecedented act of cooperation sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) to speed up research, development and distribution.
The goal is to develop and deliver reliable vaccines quickly, hopefully by spring 2021, although vaccines can take up to 10 years to complete testing and other regulatory obligations.
Despite President Donald Trump’s perplexing boycott of WHO, many government leaders have joined the initiative, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Trump stayed away from launch last Friday despite the fact that an effective vaccine for the Covid-19 strain of coronavirus cannot be found without reliable data and full cooperation from every affected country.
Currently, almost all the world’s nearly 200 countries and territories are affected and vulnerable. Only the WHO has the experience and global presence needed to persuade so many diverse governments to cooperate.
The “Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator”, or ACT Accelerator, is a collaboration between WHO and dozens of governments, nonprofit organizations and industry leaders.
It is designed to speed and scale up whatever tools are needed to end the pandemic and, above all, to ensure that the vaccines are distributed fairly to poorer countries without discrimination.
These are early days but it will reportedly be led by Sir Andrew Witty, who is suspending his role as president of US health-care giant United Health Group. He earlier ran vaccine-maker GlaxoSmithKline.
As a carrot to Trump, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who has rightly warned that the “worst is yet ahead of us” will not be in charge.
But the US will not have a leading role because most of the $8 billion needed as seed money to get started right away has already been found and a pledging conference is slated for May 4. At the start, vaccines research and development will need $3 billion and $2.25 will be earmarked for medicines.
The initiative’s early partners include many governments, including Germany, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, South Africa, Rwanda, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Finland and Costa Rica. Like the US, China has not yet joined.
The ACT Accelerator has access to a great deal of global expertise through the World Bank, international institutions, NGOs and the private sector, including the Wellcome Trust, the Gates Foundation, the vaccine alliance GAVI, the Global Fund (which fights AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis), and the Red Cross.
Other pledges of support include the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, the International Generic and Biosimilar Medicines Association, and the Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network. They include the world’s leading research laboratories and life science companies.
These and other partners have extensive experience in distributing vaccines and medicines during global health crises and in scaling up and sustaining solutions. US government support would be helpful but not crucial.
However, vaccine development is just the first step. People in many countries have problems with accepting vaccination. So, many actions must be taken downstream to make the use, the scale-up and delivery of vaccines and drugs successful in public health terms.
Above all, the treatments must be affordable and produced by the billions for rapid distribution around the world. These are mammoth undertakings involving the development, production and equitable distribution of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics for Covid-19.
The first steps include identifying the best vaccine candidates, funding their development and agreeing on how to share them. The goal is to prevent any country from losing out by failing to develop a vaccine or obtain it from elsewhere.
Many countries have already placed embargoes on export of medical materials needed to prevent or treat Covid-19. In the past, poorer countries have found it very hard and expensive to obtain vaccines to control outbreaks of coronavirus infections. “We cannot allow that to happen,” said Tedros.
The ACT Accelerator’s goal is to create a more level global playing field. The underlying recognition, not yet acknowledged by Trump, is that effective vaccines and other preventive materials cannot be developed without global cooperation since Covid-19 affects various people differently.
Failure to account for the differing effects on people or gather enough diverse data for effective vaccines and drugs will put everyone at higher risk. Hopefully, the US and China will put aside their political quarrels and put their strengths to work through the ACT Accelerator.
Life science companies would usually scramble to secure potentially lucrative Covid-19 markets across the world but will, hopefully, recognize that this time the virus is too dangerous for them to fight only their own corners.