Children in the Philippines will not attend school until a vaccine to protect against Covid-19 becomes available, officials confirmed, prompting fears millions of students could be left without access to education.
Scientists around the world are racing to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, but most experts caution that it will take at least a year or two for one to become available.
On Monday, Philippines education secretary Leonor Briones said online or TV classes would resume at the end of August, but there were concerns that children from the poorest or most remote communities, who do not have internet access, will miss out.
The country recently eased a strictly enforced quarantine that had been in place for more than two months, despite hundreds of new cases continuing to emerge daily. The lockdown has succeeded in slowing transmission, but it has also devastated the economy, and left millions of people work and in need of urgent social assistance.
Restrictions on movement remain in place, including for children, whoare generally not allowed outside their homes unless they are going out to get essentials or going to work.
On Monday, 579 new infections were announced in the Philippines, bringing total cases to 22,474 cases. So far, 1,011 fatalities have been recorded.
The total number of known global cases of coronavirus was 7,119,454, with 406,540 deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Monday that the pandemic was worsening.
Governments have pledged billions of dollars to fund research into Covid-19, with teams across the world focused on developing vaccines and therapies. One of the contenders is the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which said last week that it is on track to begin rolling out a vaccine in September if ongoing trials prove successful.
Most scientists have predicted that a vaccine is likely to take longer,but there is hope that antiviral therapiescould emerge more quickly. In the UK, five new drugs are being trialled in 30 hospitals in an effort to find a treatment.
On Sunday, it was reported that AstraZenecamay be close to a breakthroughon an antibody treatment that could save the lives of people in the early stages of infection.
Across the world, governments are grappling with how to reopen schools without causing a surge in transmission. Children can be infected with the virus, according to the WHO, though there are relatively few cases of Covid-19 reported among children.
A number of countries have resumed face-to-face classes, including France, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand. South Korea, however, was forced to delay the reopening of schools late last month following a surge in case.
In Indonesias capital Jakarta, officials allowed businesses to reopen this week, but schools will remain closed for the next month.
Offices, restaurants and grocery stores reopened with a reduced number of employees and customers present, as the country seeks to reopen its economy. On Friday, mosques and all other places of worship were also allowed to reopen at half capacity and with social-distancing requirements in place.
Public transportation also resumed with limits on passenger numbers on Monday, causing long queues at train stations.
The reopening of the capital comes just days after Indonesia reported a recorded daily spike of 993 cases, and amid concerns the virus is continuing to spread across the country.
Indonesia has recorded 31,186 infections, mostly in Jakarta and East Java, though on Monday officials in Bali reported an increase in local transmissions on the island.
Bali governor, I Wayan Koster, reported 25 news cases on Sunday, including one imported case, and raised alarms over a lack of awareness among residents. The governments official tally suggested 12 new cases were confirmed in Bali on Monday, the Jakarta Post reported, bringing the total number of infections to 594. Inconsistencies in data, and delays in testing, have proved a challenge in monitoring the outbreak.
Across Indonesia, there have been 31,186 confirmed infections and 1,851 fatalities.
In other coronavirus developments:
New Zealand awoke to the lifting of all restrictions except border controls on Tuesday.
Australia recorded no locally transmitted cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday.
Brazil now has reported 707,412 cases and deaths have risen to 37,134. It marks a continuing steep rise.
Mexico reported 2,999 new cases on Monday and 354 deaths.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) accused China of trying to sabotage the development of a coronavirus vaccine on Sunday withoutproviding details to back up his claims.
"We have got to get this vaccine done. Unfortunately we have evidence that communist China is trying to sabotage us or slow it down," Scott said on the BBC's "Andrew Marr Show."
Scott said China "wont cheer" if the U.S. or England is the first country to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.
US-China #Covid_19 row: "We have got to get this vaccine done. Unfortunately we have evidence that communist China is trying to sabotage us or slow it down," says Republican Senator Rick Scott#Marr https://t.co/8fIAQff8oG pic.twitter.com/BrSKiFHPmU
Marr pressed Scott on his comments, asking him what evidence he was referencing.
"China can't stop us developing a vaccine, can it?" Marr asked.
"It came to our intelligence community. ... Im on Armed Services, so clearly there's things I can't discuss. ... I get provided information. But there's evidence that they've been trying to either sabotage or slow it down," Scott responded.
When asked for additional comment from The Hill, a spokesperson for Scott pointed to a bill the senatorand other GOPcolleagues introduced last month that aims to prevent China from stealing or sabotaging American COVID-19 vaccine research.
Scotts commentscame as China released a report defending its response to the virus. The report says China provided information in a timely and transparent manner, The Associated Press reportedSunday.
--This report was updated on June 8 at 12:07 p.m.
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts I was recently stunned to learn of the serious consideration being given to deliberately infecting human volunteers with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in order to assess the effectiveness of potential COVID-19 vaccines.
My first reaction was that the advocates of such human challenge studies had gone so mad with panic that they had forgotten the history and horrors of medical experimentation on humans. But on closer inspection, I saw that they included some of the worlds most respected vaccine researchers and medical ethicists, and even the World Health Organization.
As far as I can tell, their principal argument is that waiting for an answer from naturally occurring infections will take too long. The new coronavirus has already infected 6.5 million people worldwide and killed more than 386,000, including 107,000 in the United States alone. And in the absence of safe, effective vaccines and treatments, measures aimed at controlling the viruss spread are ruining economies around the world. The WHOs recent white paper on the use of human subjects for vaccine research makes it clear that such trials are a desperate last resort.
Vaccines are indeed the most effective medications we have. Some have conferred long-term immunity against great scourges such as smallpox, polio, typhoid, diphtheria, typhus and tetanus. But there are just as many diseases for which no truly effective vaccine exists, including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. And some vaccines can do more harm than good, as attempts to develop a dengue vaccine have demonstrated.
Caveats notwithstanding, the rush to develop a COVID-19 vaccine that will definitively end the loss of life and stop the economic devastation has already produced more than 100 candidates, all in very early stages of development. With so many pharmaceutical companies and governments scrambling to get some skin in the game, each day seems to bring announcements of new programs, most of them unaccompanied by supporting data.
But deliberately infecting volunteers with SARS-CoV-2 to test the efficacy of vaccine candidates is unnecessary, uninformative and unethical.
Why unnecessary?
Most vaccines are developed in the context of active epidemics. But one prominent British researcher recently opined that there is only a 50 percent chance that enough people in the United Kingdom will be infected with the virus for the University of Oxford vaccine field trial (as currently designed) to yield a statistically significant result. What a curious statement. Does it mean that the trial is too small, or too short, or that the Oxford team expects their vaccine to be only partly effective or all three?
After all, there is no shortage of new infections. On an average day, close to 100,000 newly confirmed cases are reported worldwide, and I cannot recall another disease for which such a number was insufficient for a field trial of a drug or vaccine. Surely, with more time and patience, a real test is possible.
Moreover, the major departure from the norm entailed by human challenge studies presupposes a lack of alternative means to control the pandemic. But many East Asian countries, as well as some Nordic states, New Zealand and Australia, have so far successfully controlled the virus in the absence of highly effective drugs or vaccines. And Wuhan, the Chinese city where it originated, is now essentially free of COVID-19, save for minor, containable flare-ups.
In each case, the relevant authorities have executed well-known, proven public health measures: clear messaging, strong stay-at-home orders, vigorous disease detection, contact tracing and mandatory supervised controlled isolation for all those exposed to the virus.
Although not every country is capable of implementing what works, all should try their best to control the pandemic through proven methods, rather than pinning their hopes on a vaccine that either will be slow in coming or may not work at all. In addition, medical ethicists should consider governments moral obligations to protect citizens through proper use of public health measures, rather than by opening a Pandoras box of unnecessary human experimentation.
Challenge studies are also uninformative. To the best of my knowledge, all current protocols for vaccine trials envisage enrolling only young, healthy adults. This is understandable from a recruitment perspective, but COVID-19 morbidity and mortality are highest among the elderly, who have a plethora of underlying chronic diseases.
Numerous studies have shown that vaccines that are effective among the young can fail in older populations sometimes completely. Our bodies ability to respond to most, if not all, vaccines declines precipitously with age. Are todays COVID-19 vaccine developers seriously entertaining the idea of trials that use a live virus in this vulnerable population?
Furthermore, preliminary studies using non-human primates have already shown that potential vaccines may not provide complete protection; when confronted with the virus, the vaccinated animals were spared serious infection of the lungs, but not of the nasal passages. The same was true of the wide variety of vaccine candidates previously developed for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), also coronaviruses. And the implications of partial protection for both community spread and human disease are not well understood.
Finally, human challenge trials are unethical. SARS-CoV-2 causes multi-system disease in about 20 percent of those infected, and the incidence may be even higher in challenge studies, given the large virus doses likely to be used. Infection may permanently damage the heart, lungs, brain and kidneys, in the young as well as the old. Moreover, once someone is infected, there is no known drug that completely cures or even ameliorates COVID-19, much less reverses serious damage. And because it is extremely unlikely that all vaccine candidates will work in all trials, a number of volunteers will be permanently harmed.
If such trials are unnecessary, uninformative and dangerous, then they are by definition unethical. I fear that in the rush to find a medical miracle to end the pandemics toll in human lives and livelihoods, we will jeopardize the centuries-old moral imperative to do no harm, possibly destroying trust in the integrity of science and medicine for generations to come. In that case, the losses we will face will be far greater.
William A. Haseltine, a scientist, biotech entrepreneur and infectious disease expert, is chair and president of the global health think tank ACCESS Health International. Project Syndicate, 2020. www.project-syndicate.org
Since 1984, hes been at the table and helping lead the fight to keep Americans healthy and virus-free.
Now in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci has become the voice and symbol of both promise and resolve in the battle against the new coronavirus.
Dr. Fauci sat down with Healthline for an exclusive interview on Fridayto talk about the COVID-19 pandemic, working with six presidential administrations, and what he does to deal with pandemic stress.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who served as a member of President Trumps task force on COVID-19.
Dr. Anthony Fauci:Its interesting we are speaking today. On June 4, 1981, the first report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention morbidity and mortality weekly report showed that five gay men, all from Los Angeles, had presented with a strange new syndrome.
In 1984, when I became director of [the NIAID], it was the very beginning of an outbreak that we didnt fully understand the full implications of. We thought incorrectly that it was restricted to the gay community and to injecting drug users.
We didnt realize that throughout the world and in Africa it was bubbling up as a mostly heterosexual disease, which right now, today, fast-forward, more than 80 million people have been infected, more than 37 million people have died, and there are 37 million people living with HIV. That was my first interaction with the presidency, with the administration of Ronald Reagan.
So it wasnt the explosive, immediate nature of COVID-19, which essentially impacts, directly or indirectly, everybody in the world because everyone feels they are at risk. Thats different than with HIV, when it was clear it was defined by a risk behavior and not something that was completely out of your control, like respiratory illness.
And then we had the anthrax attacks and the pandemic flu, and we had Ebola and Zika, so for better or worse Ive had the opportunity to be involved in six different administrations through outbreaks, some of which were much more severe than others; some of which were threatening, but they didnt really impact us like Ebola. You know, there were headlines, but there was never really any risk in the United States that there would be an outbreak.
But to answer your question: This, that we are living through now, is truly unprecedented.
People have asked me this because of the length of time Ive been doing this, that throughout all the years, whats your worst nightmare?
And I always say my worst nightmare and I said this years ago, not just recently to coincide with COVID Ive been saying for decades that my worst nightmare is the evolution of a new infection that jumps species easily from an animal model to a human thats a respiratory virus, because those are the ones that can spread easily, and that it is highly efficient in its ability to spread from person to person, and that it has a high degree of morbidity and mortality. Thats what I was always saying would be my worst nightmare.
Fauci:Here we are, folks. My worst nightmare. To put it bluntly, Ive been doing this for 36 years, and this is the most unprecedented, disturbing situation weve had because of the potential of being what it is and not just potential. Its a global pandemic.
Fauci:I think its the capability of our scientific community to come up with solutions. I mean, we are well into the development of a vaccine, which is the fastest that weve ever gone from the recognition of a new pathogen, in this case a virus. And starting off on vaccine development with multiple candidates [being tested] in humans already.
Hopefully by the end of this year we will develop a vaccine we can deploy. We can never guarantee that. You can never, ever guarantee the success of a vaccine. We just have good experience to know that we are aspirationally, cautiously optimistic that we will have one by the end of the year.
If we do that, that will overwhelmingly be the fastest weve ever gotten a vaccine. That gives me hope. The fact that we are working hard on developing different therapies so that as we get into the fall and winter season we hopefully will have a couple of therapies that have shown to be effective.
Weve already proven in one randomized control trial with remdesivir that it has a statistically significant but modest effect on decreasing the time it takes to recover in hospitalized patients with lung disease.
The other thing is that we know that when we do physical separation, we can actually blunt the effect of the spread of the virus. The only difficulty with that, as you well know, is that when you shut down society to prevent physical closeness and interaction, it has unintended consequences on the economy, on employment, even on the health of individuals who need medical care for other things besides coronavirus. So, its a complicated situation.
Fauci:Im worried on two sides of the coin. Well, I mean, Im not worried, I dont worry about things.I try to do things about it. Im attentive to and concerned about making sure we indeed get good control of this outbreak.
Weve seen it going in the right direction over the last couple of weeks with a major decrease in the number of deaths in this country, and certainly a decrease in hospitalizations. We have a less dramatic but nonetheless real gradual decline in the number of new cases, so were going in the right direction.
But I want to make sure we stay in the right direction, and that as we begin to reopen, we dont have a surge of cases.
I also am, as someone who realizes that we need to have society function, that weve got to try to get back to normal in a safe and prudent way because, if not, the unintended consequences of shutting down can be really serious.
Fauci:You want to make sure that, in your desire to get back to normal, that we dont leapfrog over some of the benchmarks we need to reach in order to get to the next stage.
Weve put out a series of guidelines that are very well delineated. We do need to be patient and careful, but we need to proceed both to try and suppress the virus and to get back to normality.
Fauci:Its a combination. We are producing vaccine at risk, which means we are producing it even though we dont know yet if the vaccine works, which means if we are lucky and it does work, we will have saved several months and made it available as soon as the winter.
If we are wrong and it doesnt work, then we will have essentially wasted a few hundred million dollars. We feel it is worth the risk because the consequences of not having a vaccine ready by the winter for those who need it.
Fauci:My wife Christine is always the go to person when I have to talk through a particularly difficult issue, or when I need an outside trusted judgment on a particularly thorny problem.She is an amazing, levelheaded, analytical person with a heavy dose of common sense.
Also, running has been my major stress reducers for decades.The combination of those two is critical in getting me through highly stressful times.
Fauci:The things weve discussed, the therapies and vaccines: We should all be hopeful about those. I think they need to be heads-up and cautious that this is not over yet.
We are still in the middle of an outbreak, and weve got to all pull together as a community, as a nation, and as a global population. Because were all in the same boat here. This is threatening to all of us, and we cannot forget that. Weve got to continue to work hard to get control of it.
Fauci:You know, there are a lot of similarities and differences. It isnt as if this is different thanallthe others. Each is different. Reagan was different than Clinton, and Clinton was different than Bush. Bush was different from Obama, and this is different than Obama.
I dont think you can pull this [administration] out and say this is unique. You know, we have a big government, and it generally works very well.
Fauci:How will it end? We will have control over it. Unfortunately, we will have suffered a terrible burden, but it will end, and we will get back to normal, hopefully sooner rather than later.
I think as a word of hope, people should realize: Dont despair. This will end, and we will get control over it.
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U.S. Reps. Annie Kuster (D-NH) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) introduced legislation to ensure that the United States can mass produce and administer a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it is available.
The Coronavirus Vaccine Development Act requires the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to expand the nations manufacturing capacity for COVID-19 vaccines as well as the products necessary to administer the vaccines.
In order to fully reopen our economy, put the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, and move onto our new normal, the majority of Americans will need to be vaccinated for this virus, Kuster said. Our nations top doctors and vaccine experts tell us that we are still a ways away from identifying and approving a vaccine for this virus, but we must begin working now to ensure that we are prepared to administer vaccines once one is available. This legislation will help to ensure that Americans especially communities that have been disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus will not face unnecessary delays or obstacles to getting vaccinated.
The bill also requires the administration to provide a report assessing the vaccine supply chain and manufacturing capacity. In addition, the administration must provide an update on efforts to prepare to vaccinate Americans once a vaccine is identified and approved.
While we havent gotten to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must start preparing to reopen America in a way that protects our public health, Jeffries said. A vaccine will be crucial to that effort, and our nation will need a plan to get one to the American people swiftly. I am proud to join Rep. Annie Kuster in introducing legislation to help create a comprehensive plan to mass-produce and administer a COVID-19 vaccine quickly and efficiently.
New York The way the COVID-19 crisis ends is with vaccines not a vaccine. More than one horse can win this race. Some of us might end up getting a shot of a more traditional vaccine, which uses parts of an inactivated virus to stimulate immunity. Others might get vaccines based on emerging technologies that use synthetic versions of the viruss genetic code.
One such novel candidate, based on RNA the single-stranded cousin of DNA and made by Moderna, showed promising results in early human trials, though critics warned the evidence is preliminary. Meanwhile, a different prototype based on DNA made headlines for an experiment that showed it worked in monkeys.
In the end, some vaccines might be extremely effective but harder to scale; others the opposite. Even a less-effective vaccine might work well enough to provide herd immunity in a wider population. Other vaccines might be more appropriate for health care workers, who have to risk exposure on the job, and need protection as soon as possible.
Scientists have created more than 70 vaccine candidates so far. If we end up with two, three, or four vaccines, thats good, since we have seven billion people, says Harvard vaccine researcher Dan Barouch, who led the development of one of the vaccines featured in recent news. His group began working on a vaccine in January, after the virus started spreading in China.
There are good reasons for him and other scientists to be optimistic.
For COVID-19, its clear most humans who get infected recover that alone shows the human immune system can eliminate the virus, he says. That makes it a much easier target than HIV, which he calls unprecedented in the history of vaccinology for its ability to evade the immune system. And the SARS-Cov2 virus doesnt have the fast mutation rate that makes flu viruses a moving target.
Art Krieg, a physician and founder of Checkmate Pharmaceuticals, says hes very optimistic that because the human immune system can successfully battle the virus, so will one or more of the many experimental vaccines.
All vaccines have to provide a danger signal to prime the immune system into acting against an invader. In 1995, Krieg reported the discovery one of these danger signals called CpG DNA which has been used in several vaccines, including one for hepatitis B, and is in some of the experimental candidates fighting against the virus that causes COVID-19.
Next, the vaccine has to mimic the invader in order to get the immune system to create specific antibodies that target the intended enemy. Vaccine designers using genetic material (DNA or RNA) have to stimulate the immune system enough to generate those antibodies, but not so much that the immune system destroys the vaccine before it can complete its mission.
The biggest driver of recent headlines (and stock market drama) was a vaccine produced by the Massachusetts-based company Moderna, which is based on synthetic genetic material identical to parts of the code carried by the coronavirus. The genetic material is RNA. (Other RNA vaccines are being studied by BionTech, Translate Bio, and Curevac.) The RNA tricks human cells into making proteins identical to the spike proteins the virus uses to penetrate human cells. And that, in turn, stimulates the immune system to make antibodies that will be ready to block that protein if the real coronavirus invades.
The excitement about Modernas vaccine followed the release of data from a trial that involved 45 volunteers, though the company only described results for eight of them. Of the eight, all produced antibodies with the desired neutralizing property needed to attack the virus in the future. What happened to the other 37 people? Since this vaccine requires two doses, they probably just didnt have that data yet, says Krieg.
A similar concept is behind DNA vaccines. The one developed by Harvards Barouch made the news for a successful experiment in monkeys. Other DNA vaccines are already in early human trials, including candidates developed by Oxford University, Johnson & Johnson and the Chinese company CanSino Biologics.
These DNA vaccines use synthetic strings of code for making the spike protein carried by the virus. In some of these, the synthetic DNA is injected alone, while in others, it rides into human cells inside a deactivated cold virus (called an adenovirus). The human cells transcribe the DNA to RNA, and then into the decoy spike protein used to create immunity to the real thing. While the prototype developed by Barouchs group at Harvard can be given in two shots, the Oxford DNA vaccine and several others that use cold viruses confer immunity with just one shot, says Krieg.
DNA and RNA arent our only options. Yet another vaccine concept, made by Dynavax, uses the spike protein itself and stimulates the immune system using a synthetic DNA danger signal the CpG DNA. These protein-based vaccines would have to be produced in bulk in fermentation vats, which Krieg says is something the biotech industry is equipped to do.
Krieg says all the novel vaccines work through the same well-established scientific principles, and are very likely to be safe. Still, he says, its well known that vaccines dont work as well in the elderly and immunocompromised. Imperfect vaccines could still eradicate the virus through herd immunity but only if the bulk of the population gets vaccinated. Once the technical hurdles are overcome, there will be social hurdles already, there are movements among anti-vaxxers to resist but its not too soon to plan to surmount them.
Barouch says the ordinarily competitive nature of science has changed, as everyone understands how much is at stake in terms of lives and economic damage. In retrospect, critics might be able to criticize approaches that didnt work, but right now, we need all the ideas we can get.
Science writer Faye Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.
To get the world moving and kickstart international travel again, experts say we'll need up to 15 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
Distributing such large amounts at once is near impossible.
So, who are likely to get their hands on the vaccine first?
Around 120 labs globally are developing a vaccine, among them a promising Australian effort led by the University of Queensland.
Up to 12 candidates are in more advanced stages that's according to the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA).
"I think we have never in the history of vaccines seen so many labs, so many companies working on finding vaccines for the same disease," IFPMA chief Thomas Cueni said.
The advanced candidates have moved on to carry out tests on humans.
Ideally, you'd want to test the vaccine on tens of thousands of people before releasing it to the wider population, says bioethics expert Jonathan Moreno from Johns Hopkins University, which collates data on COVID-19 cases.
"In theory, you could do 20,000 with a vaccine and 10,000 with placebo, so that nobody knows who exactly is getting what," Professor Moreno said.
"And we would find out over six, eight, 10 months how that's gone but the world is not going to wait [that long]."
Professor Moreno says there's a deviation already, with some labs conducting animal and human studies simultaneously, which can speed up the process but is fraught with controversy.
"You'd want to [test] animals probably before people. But the schedule we're on now is such that we're doing animals in parallel to people," he said.
In any case, experts say the earliest we can see a vaccine is late 2020, early 2021.
"There may be a vaccine that people have some degree of confidence in terms of safety by the end of the year. That would be very fast schedule, everybody agrees," Professor Moreno said.
Because many parts of the world have been successful in flattening the curve, soon there may not be enough virus around for people to be naturally exposed to it.
Some are suggesting we could then conduct the controversial challenge studies, whereby volunteers are deliberately exposed to the virus.
"I think there's serious apprehension by doing it in terms of safety hazards, in terms of risks, in terms of ethical questions," Mr Cueni said.
"The problem is, if there's no other way then challenge studies may be the only option to do it."
Professor Moreno thinks the current political climate and impending election in the United States may speed up the release of a vaccine.
"It would not surprise me if the Trump Administration jumped on a vaccine that had guidance through some advocacy studies with a smaller group and before the election day in November," he said.
But Mr Cueni warns rushing a vaccine can deter public trust in medicine and encourage anti-vaxxer movements.
"If something goes wrong with the vaccine, you could do tremendous damage in the confidence of vaccination and immunisation," he said.
It's a "mindboggling" number, says Mr Cueni.
"If you really want to create herd immunity, you're basically trying to get 80 per cent of population immunised," he said.
"And on the assumption that you may need two doses rather than one, the numbers I've seen range from 12 to 15 billion doses."
Professor Moreno says achieving herd immunity is desirable.
"To get the world moving again and to get people comfortable with travel, you'd want to vaccinate everybody," he said.
The Department of Health told the ABC that Australia's "strategic goal" was to achieve herd immunity, in order to break the chain of transmission in the community.
Medicines Australia CEO Elizabeth de Somer says one vaccine won't cut it to reach herd immunity.
"I think that the world will need more than one in order to be able to manufacture it at a scale and magnitude that is required to vaccinate the world," she said.
The IFPMA estimates the global vaccines manufacturing capacity today is at five billion and it takes between five to 10 years to build a new vaccines manufacturing plant.
It's evident that vaccinating the global population at once is out of question not in the least because there aren't enough vials in the world to store the vaccine in.
"Everybody agrees that one will need to talk about allocation who'll get vaccinated first," Mr Cueni said.
Developing a vaccine is hard, but the mass production is in many ways harder, says Professor Moreno.
"The truth is, no factory can produce billions of doses, so there are going to be stages of this and there will be first users," he said.
Many experts believe those first users should be the society's most vulnerable.
"It's not hard to identify who these vulnerable people would be generally the older people, people with diabetes or high blood pressure," Professor Moreno said.
"And then essential workers, military, police officers, firefighters. Then you go down the list."
The Department of Health said details around establishing priority groups for a vaccination and how the vaccine would be distributed were still underway.
"As promising vaccine candidates emerge, decisions around roll-out of a national COVID-19 immunisation programme will be made by National Cabinet, based on the recommendations of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee," it said.
"Decisions will be made using the best available scientific evidence, an assessment of the relative risk of vulnerable groups as well as the stocks of vaccine available at any one time."
Professor Moreno believes it's inevitable the so-called elite countries will access the vaccine first.
"High-end countries they're in a better position. Follow the money," he said.
"We've already seen, you might call it vaccine nationalism, going on, and this is really disturbing.
"In a perfect world, you'd want the WHO [the World Health Organisation] to establish the guidance globally, but I will not predict what will happen now," he said, referring to US President Donald Trump's testy relationship with the organisation.
Mr Cueni hopes the world has learnt from the 2009 incident, when "rich countries" bought up all the vaccines against H1N1 a strain known as swine flu leaving "poor countries" stranded.
"This is something which led to a lot of bad blood," he said.
"I think there's now an understanding that we need to have this element of global solidarity."
New Delhi, June 8
Google on Monday revealed that vaccine-related searches reached a new record high and increased by over 190 per cent in India during the month of May.
The report also showed that coronavirus dropped to 12th most searched topic overall during May, behind topics like film, meaning, news and weather - all consistently highly searched topics in India.
The top trending search term overall for May was "Lockdown 4.0", which spiked 3,150 per cent, while "Eid Mubarak" was a second top trending term with the rise of 2,650 per cent.
Search interest for "coronavirus lockdown zones Delhi" grew more than 1,800 per cent over the month, while "Italy coronavirus vaccine" spiked 750 per cent, it added.
The state with the highest search interest over May was Goa, followed by Meghalaya and Chandigarh.
According to the company, search interest for coronavirus was half the monthly volume for April, but still five times more searched than Cricket.
Trending questions for coronavirus in May include: Which disease is related to coronavirus?, covid19.org tracker India, What is the vaccine?, Is corona vaccine ready?, web series -- Patal Lok, etc.
Last month, Google revealed that recipe-related searches hit a new record high in India.
While 'dalgona coffee recipe at home' spiked 5,000 per cent, searches for 'chicken momo recipe' grew 4,350 per cent and searches for "mango icecream recipe" saw 3,250 per cent rise. IANS
Our numbers team looks at whether thousands gathering across Georgia has reflected in any changes in our COVID-19 cases.
ATLANTA In the last week, thousands of people from across Georgia, the United States, and the world have gathered to protest police brutality after the death of George Floyd.
This comes as states start to lift shelter-in-place orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. So the question on many people's minds is how themass gatherings will impactthe spread of the virus?
Because the data lags a few weeks, the numbers we are getting right now are from at least two weeks ago.
It takes a while for the virus to incubate - up to 14 days. In the first few days, most people are symptom-free. If you're feeling fine, you're not likely to get a test. The chances are that people who go get tested already had the virus for several days without a strict quarantine.
So, when thinking about the protests that started over a week ago, people could just now be feeling symptoms if they were exposed to COVID-19.
Once you get a test, it could take up to five days to get the results and for that to be reported to the state. It's likely we won't know how the mass gatherings will impact the COVID-19 numbers for two weeks.
As for new cases, we had on average 613 new cases reported each day last week. The week prior we had 559 new cases per day on average in Georgia.
And for the first time in more than a week, we saw the number of people being treated for COVID-19 at the hospitals increase.
As a reporter who was out covering the protests, 11Alive's Rebecca Lindstrom took the mayor's advice and went to get tested.
She first went onto her county's health department website and signed up to get a test. The health department contacted her saying she had an appointment the next afternoon.
After months of investigating the problems with testing in Georgia, from testing shortages to some waiting up to 12 days for test results, Lindstrom experienced a smoother and faster experience. She received her test results less than 24 hours after her test.
"I was able to log in online to get my results. I'm happy to say it was negative," said Lindstrom.
Lindstrom, along with the rest of the 11Alive numbers team, is continuing to monitor and analyze the latest COVID-19 data.
Of course, keeping an eye on the impact on the black community. Right now, African Americans make up about the same number of COVID-19 positive cases as white people while only representing a third of Georgia's population.
What's also troubling is the number of cases marked as unknown on the Georgia Department of Health's website.
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