In a protest designed to adhere to social-distancing, 1,000 pop-up signs were arranged on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building showing the faces of nurses and frontline healthcare workers pleading for adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) on April 17, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Paul Morigi | Getty Images
Since emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, the coronavirus disease has spread to 185 countries and territories infecting more than 2.7 million people and killing over 190,000 globally, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
To stem further spread of the virus, authorities around the world implemented measures to lock down countries and cities to varying degrees. That includes closing borders, shutting schools and workplaces, and limiting large gatherings.
Those restrictions, which the International Monetary Fund called the "Great Lockdown," brought much of global economic activity to a halt, hurting businesses and causing people to lose their jobs.
"This is a truly global crisis as no country is spared," Gita Gopinath, the IMF's chief economist, wrote in a blog post earlier this month.
Here are seven charts that show how the coronavirus pandemic has hit the global economy.
Many economists have warned that lockdown measures around the world will accelerate job losses that's already showing up in unemployment numbers in several economies.
The services industry is a major source of growth and employment for many countries, including the U.S. and China two of the world's largest economies and consumer markets.
But both countries reported sharp declines in retail sales as lockdown measures during the pandemic forced many stores to shut and kept consumers at home. A surge in online sales reported by some retailers, such as Amazon, failed to stem the overall fall.
Economists warned that consumers may not resume spending even after lockdown measures are lifted. That's evident in the "slow improvement" in retail sales in China even after the country allowed a gradual reopening of businesses, said analysts from Oxford Economics.
"The slow improvement in household spending underpins our view that, globally, consumers are unlikely to rush back to the shops as soon as restrictions are lifted," they wrote in a report.
A broader hit to the services industry has been observed globally, with businesses in the transportation, real estate, and travel and tourism sectors experiencing some of the largest declines in activity so far, according to IHS Markit.
Manufacturers, already weighed down by the U.S.-China trade war in the last two years, have once again come under pressure as the coronavirus spreads around the world.
The Covid-19 pandemic first hit manufacturers outside China that rely on factories in the Asian economic giant for materials and parts also known as "intermediate goods" to make their own products. But Chinese factories suspended operations for longer than expected as authorities worked to contain the virus.
As more countries impose lockdown measures, a greater number of manufacturing firms were hit. Some were forced to temporarily shut down, while those that remain open faced restrictions in getting their supply of intermediate goods and materials.
On top of that, a reduction in demand for goods exacerbated the challenges that manufacturers face. As a result, factories across the U.S. to Europe and Asia have reported declines in output over the past month.
Global trade, which was already slowing in 2019, is expected to be weighed down further this year.
The coronavirus pandemic's hit to economic activity has led many institutions to slash their forecasts for the global economy.
The International Monetary Fund, whose assessment of the economy is widely followed, expects the global economy to shrink by 3% this year. Only a handful of economies such as China and India are expected to grow in 2020, IMF said.
While the fund has penciled in a rebound of 5.8% growth next year, it said that recovery is "only partial as the level of economic activity is projected to remain below the level we had projected for 2021, before the virus hit."
"The cumulative loss to global GDP over 2020 and 2021 from the pandemic crisis could be around 9 trillion dollars, greater than the economies of Japan and Germany, combined," Gopinath, the fund's chief economist, wrote.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves 10 Downing Street for PMQs at the House of Commons on 25 March, 2020 in London, England.
Wiktor Szymanowicz | NurPhoto | Getty Images
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will return to work Monday after recovering from coronavirus, according to Downing Street.
Johnson has been convalescing at Chequers, the prime minister's country estate, since he was discharged from hospital earlier this month. Dominic Raab, the U.K. foreign secretary, has stood in for Johnson during his absence.
Johnson, who tested positive for the virus in late March, initially said he had mild symptoms. He was admitted to hospital in early April and subsequently placed inintensive careforthreedays after his condition deteriorated.
Johnson was the first publicly reported case of a world leader testing positive.
Critics have accused the prime minister of not acting early and forcefullyto contain the virus as it quickly spread across continental Europe.Johnson ordered nonessential businesses to close on March 23, more than a week after such measures were implemented in Italy, France, Spain and hard-hit areas in the U.S.
The U.K. has more than 149,000 confirmed cases of the virus and at least 20,381 deaths. On April 16, Britain extended nationwide lockdown measures by three weeks.
It will take the UK economy three years to fully recover from the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a leading forecasting group.
As the damage for jobs and growth unfolds, the EY Item Club said it would take until 2023 for the the economy to return to the level reached at the end of last year due to the depth of the crisis.
One month on from the imposition of lockdown measures across Britain, effectively bringing large swathes of the economy to a halt, the group warned that almost half of all consumer spending in 2020 the major engine of UK growth over recent decades is at risk of either being delayed or lost completely.
The group of economists said GDP was set to collapse by 6.8% in 2020, before returning to positive growth of 4.5% in 2021 as businesses try to make up for lost time and consumers ramp up their spending again.
The forecast is based on the assumption that some lockdown restrictions will start to be eased in May, with controls relaxed further in June. As such, the Item Club believes the economy should benefit later in the year from a degree of pent-up demand as people are allowed to travel again and return to the shops.
Howard Archer, the chief economic adviser to the Item Club, said the report assumes that the governments measures aimed at supporting businesses and saving jobs would have a significant positive impact. [The support] is absolutely crucial to limiting the potential longer-term damage to the economy, he said.
In a separate report, the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce said one in three jobs in parts of Britain were at risk due to Covid-19.
It said Richmondshire in North Yorkshire which includes chancellor Rishi Sunaks constituency tops the list of areas likely to be most affected, with 35% of jobs vulnerable owing to the areas reliance on hospitality and tourism. Jobs in London, Oxford and Cambridge, and the London commuter belt were least at risk, it said.
The Item Club said GDP would fall by about 13% in the second quarter amid the widespread lockdown measures in place across Britain and in other big economies, sliding six times faster than in the deepest quarterly decline of the 2008 financial crisis. Unemployment could hit 6.8%, surging from a rate of 4% before the crisis struck.
Sinovac Biotech has created a new COVID-19 vaccine by growing the novel coronavirus in the VERO monkey cell lineand inactivating it with chemicals.
By Jon CohenApr. 23, 2020 , 1:05 PM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.
For the first time, one of the many COVID-19 vaccines in development has protected an animal, rhesus macaques, from infection by the new coronavirus, scientists report. The vaccine, an old-fashioned formulation consisting of a chemically inactivated version of the virus, produced no obvious side effects in the monkeys, and human trials began on 16 April.
Researchers from Sinovac Biotech, a privately held Beijing-based company, gave two different doses of their COVID-19 vaccine to a total of eight rhesus macaque monkeys. Three weeks later, the group introduced SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, into the monkeys lungs through tubes down their tracheas, and none developed a full-blown infection.
The monkeys given the highest dose of vaccine had the best response: Seven days after the animals received the virus, researchers could not detect it in the pharynx or lungs of any of them. Some of the lower dosed animals had a viral blip but also appeared to have controlled the infection, the Sinovac team reports in a paper published on 19 April on the preprint server bioRxiv. In contrast, four control animals developed high levels of viral RNA in several body parts and severe pneumonia. The results give us a lot of confidence that the vaccine will work in humans, says Meng Weining, Sinovacs senior director for overseas regulatory affairs.
I like it, says Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who has co-authored a status report about the many different COVID-19 vaccines in development. This is old school but it might work. What I like most is that many vaccine producers, also in lowermiddle-income countries, could make such a vaccine.
But Douglas Reed of the University of Pittsburgh, who is developing and testing COVID-19 vaccines in monkey studies, says the number of animals was too small to yield statistically significant results. His team also has a manuscript in preparation that raises concerns about the way the Sinovac team grew the stock of novel coronavirus used to challenge the animals: It may have caused changes that make it less reflective of the ones that infect humans.
Another concern is that monkeys do not develop the most severe symptoms that SARS-CoV-2 causes in humans. The Sinovac researchers acknowledge in the paper that Its still too early to define the best animal model for studying SARS-CoV-2, but noted that unvaccinated rhesus macaques given the virus mimic COVID-19-like symptoms.
The study also addressed worries that partial protection could be dangerous. Earlier animal experiments with vaccines against the related coronaviruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome had found that low antibody levels could lead to aberrant immune responses when an animal was given the pathogens, enhancing the infection and causing pathology in their lungs. But the Sinovac team did not find any evidence of lung damage in vaccinated animals who produced relatively low levels of antibodies, which lessens the concern about vaccine enhancement, Reed says. More work needs to be done though.
SARS-CoV-2 seems to accumulate mutations slowly; even so, variants might pose a challenge for a vaccine. In test tube experiments, the Sinovac researchers mixed antibodies taken from monkeys, rats, and mice given their vaccine with strains of the virus isolated from COVID-19 patients in China, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The antibodies potently neutralized all the strains, which are widely scattered on the phylogenic tree, the researchers noted.
This provides strong evidence that the virus is not mutating in a way that would make it resistant to a #COVID19 vaccine, tweeted immunologist Mark Slifka of Oregon Health & Science University. Good to know.
Sinovac is an experienced vaccinemakerit has marketed inactivated viral vaccines for hand, foot, and mouth disease;hepatitis A and B;and H5N1 influenza or bird flu. But Meng says it could produce, at most, about 100 million doses of the vaccine and might need to partner with other makers if the companys COVID-19 vaccine proves safe and effective in human trials.
The company recently started phase I clinical trials in Jiangsu province, north of Shanghai, which aim to gauge safety and immune responses in 144 volunteers. An equal number of participants will receive the high and low doses or a placebo. Although placebos are not typicallyused in phase I studieswhich do not assess efficacyMeng says this can help better evaluate whether the vaccine causes any dangerous side effects. The company hopes to start phase II studies by mid-May that have the same design but enroll more than 1000 people, with results due by the end of June.
If all goes well, Meng says, Sinovac will seek to launch traditional phase III efficacy trials that compare the vaccine with a placebo in thousands of people. The company has alsodiscussed joining international vaccine trials being organized by the World Health Organization (WHO). Given the low level of transmission now occurring in China, the company is considering still more efficacy trials in other countries being hit harder by the virus. We cant put all our eggs in one basket, Meng says.
To quickly obtain more efficacy data after the phase I and II trials and potentially help people, Meng says Sinovac may ask regulatory agencies in China and other countries for emergency authorization to give the vaccine to those at high risk of becoming infected, such as customs agents and police officers who do not typically wear the protective gear used by health care workers. The Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018 began to widely usean experimental Ebola vaccine under that status and the evidence suggests it powerfully helped curb that epidemic. (That Ebola vaccine first received regulatory approval in November 2019.)
According to WHO, six other vaccines had entered human trials as of 23 April, and 77 others were in development. The vast majority of these vaccines use the modern tools of genetic engineeringonly four rely on the old-fashioned inactivation technologybut Meng says what ultimately matters is whether a vaccine is safe and effective, not how its made. We are not comparing ourselves to anyone, Meng says. In this pandemic situation, the most important thing is to make a vaccine, no matter what kind of vaccine it is, thats safe and effective as soon as possible.
In the race to develop a vaccine to end the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, charities and Big Pharma firms are sinking billions of dollars into bets with extraordinarily low odds of success.
Theyre fast-tracking the testing and regulatory review of vaccines with no guarantee they will prove effective. Theyre building and re-tooling plants for vaccines with slim chances of being approved. Theyre placing orders for vaccines that, in the end, are unlikely to be produced.
Its the new pandemic paradigm, focused on speed and fraught with risks.
The crisis in the world is so big that each of us will have to take maximum risk now to put this disease to a stop," said Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson , which has partnered with the U.S. government on a $1 billion investment to speed development and production of its still-unproven vaccine. If it fails, Stoffels told Reuters, it will be bad.
Coronavirus tracker: Live statistics of cases and deaths in Israel and around the world>>Latest coronavirus stories
Historically, just 6% of vaccine candidates end up making it to market, often after a years-long process that doesnt draw big investments until testing shows a product is likely to work. But the traditional rules of drug and vaccine development are being tossed aside in the face of a virus that has infected 2.7 million people, killed more than 192,000 and devastated the global economy. With COVID-19, the goal is to have a vaccine identified, tested and available on a scale of hundreds of millions of doses in just 12 to 18 months.
Drug companies and the governments and investors that finance them are boosting their at-risk spending in unprecedented ways. The overriding consensus among more than 30 drug company executives, government health officials and pandemic-response experts interviewed by Reuters is that the risks are necessary to ensure not only that a vaccine for the new coronavirus is developed quickly, but that it is ready to distribute as soon as its approved.
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Investments from governments, global health groups and philanthropies have been aimed primarily at the most promising of the more than 100 vaccine candidates in development worldwide. But only a handful of those have advanced to human trials, the real indicator of safety and efficacy - and the stage where most vaccines wash out.
Even among the more encouraging prospects, very few are likely to succeed. Its possible more than one will work; its possible none will.
For companies in the race, there are some likely benefits: It's a proving ground for vaccine technologies and a chance to burnish reputations and boost shares. While some large companies, including Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline Plc , have said they plan to make the vaccine available at cost - at least at first - they may reap profits down the road if seasonal vaccination is needed and countries invest in stockpiles.
But finding a vaccine that works does little good without the ability to produce and distribute it. That means building manufacturing plants now.
"We want to make investments up front, at risk, even before we know the vaccines work, to be able to (immediately) manufacture them at a scale of tens or hundreds of millions of doses, said Richard Hatchett, a physician who managed U.S. pandemic flu policy under former President George W. Bush and returned to advise the Obama White House during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
Hatchett now heads the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a vaccine-development consortium supported by private donors as well as the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. The organization has raised more than $915 million of the $2 billion it anticipates spending to accelerate testing and build specialized production plants for at least three coronavirus vaccine candidates.
In the United States, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a federal agency that funds disease-fighting technology, has announced investments of nearly $1 billion to support coronavirus vaccine development and the scale-up of manufacturing for promising candidates.
One underlying fear, shared by everyone Reuters interviewed, is that even if a vaccine does prove effective, there wont be enough to go around.
Having reserves ready worldwide to immediately inoculate critical populations - health care workers, the elderly, people made vulnerable by medical conditions - would stamp out the pandemic faster and reignite economies, Hatchett said. The alternative, he said, is a replay of past pandemics, including the H1N1 influenza outbreak of 2009, with wealthy countries hoarding the vaccines.
If that happens, pandemic experts warn, infection hot spots will continue to pop up, each with the potential to create a new wave of illness.
FULL SPEED AHEAD
The scale of the coronavirus vaccine race has no historical parallels. CEPI has identified at least 115 ongoing vaccine initiatives worldwide. And the race is shattering norms of speed and safety in drug and vaccine development.
Some developers are running safety and efficacy trials in tandem, instead of sequentially, as is typical, and short-cutting traditional testing protocols. Others are working with regulators in multiple countries simultaneously, looking for the quickest path to market.
The resulting uncertainty makes it especially risky to invest in manufacturing facilities for a given candidate, since different types of vaccines can require very distinct production lines.
Many of the candidates attracting the most investment rely on proven vaccine approaches being adapted by Big Pharma companies with regulatory and production acumen. Some funders are gambling on smaller biotech companies and academic labs, which may have promising technologies but little to no experience getting a drug or vaccine approved and produced at scale.
BARDA, the U.S. R&D agency, is one of the biggest vaccine funders, with some $5 billion to spend. The agency plans to invest in five vaccine candidates, focusing mostly on projects from experienced drug makers.
"Each is coming with a lot of prior experience, said Rick Bright, who until this month was BARDAs director. They all know how to scale up."
In one of its biggest bets, BARDA is pouring nearly $500 million into a J&J effort.
J&Js coronavirus vaccine candidate uses a cold virus, rendered harmless, to deliver genes derived from the spiky, crown-shaped proteins on the surface of the new coronavirus, prompting an immune response.
J&J is using the same technology to develop vaccines for other viruses, including Ebola. While none has completed testing and won full U.S. approval, trials so far in tens of thousands of people have produced data showing the basic approach is safe, which could speed regulatory approval for the new coronavirus vaccine. But its far from a sure bet: Animal test data, due this summer, will give the first hint of the vaccine's effectiveness and human trials will begin in September.
By end of the year, well know whether it protects humans, said Stoffels, J&Js chief science officer.
In China, CanSino Biologics Inc has vaccine technology similar to the one being used by J&J. CanSino is further along with its testing, having announced this month that its candidate had cleared initial safety trials in humans and was set to advance to the next stage.
Sanofi SA, the worlds largest vaccine maker, has attracted BARDA money for another proven approach, based on its approved Flublok flu shot. Sanofi uses insect cells instead of the traditional chicken eggs to grow the genetically altered virus proteins used to spur an immune response.
Not all the vaccine projects getting attention have a Big Pharma pedigree.
Moderna Inc, a biotech firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the first in the United States to begin human trials when it began testing its vaccine last month. Working with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the company received seed money from CEPI, and this month, BARDA kicked in $483 million to support the vaccines development and help scale up manufacturing. That includes hiring 150 skilled workers to eventually produce vaccine around the clock.
Modernas vaccine uses genetic material called messenger RNA (mRNA) to instruct cells in the body to make specific coronavirus proteins that then produce an immune response.
No mRNA vaccine has ever been approved for public use, but the technology is drawing interest, in part because it makes a vaccine easier to design and produce in vast quantities.
The end game is millions of doses," Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer, told Reuters. The company hopes to have an approved vaccine available as early as March 2021, and possibly before then for healthcare workers.
German vaccine makers CureVac and BioNTech SE , which is partnering with Pfizer Inc, are preparing to begin trials with similar mRNA-based vaccine candidates. So is Lexington, Massachusetts-based Translate Bio Inc, which is working with Sanofi.
EXTRAORDINARY SHORTCUTS
Even for vaccine hopefuls already in human tests, it will be months before theres conclusive evidence on safety and effectiveness - something funders are keenly aware of.
The rush has prompted scientists to consider previously unthinkable shortcuts.
Normally, vaccines would need to undergo clinical trials involving thousands of people before widespread inoculation is allowed. But after testing a prospective vaccine in a smaller group to ensure it is not toxic, Swiss researchers seek to immunize a lot of the Swiss population in the next six months and then produce for a world market, Dr Martin Bachmann, head of immunology at Inselspital, the University Hospital of Bern, said this week.
A spokesman for Swissmedic, the countrys drug regulator, said it was in contact with Bachmann's group and would not allow trials until the agency is assured that safety risks are addressed.
The Swiss vaccine employs virus-like particles to provoke an immune response, an approach that theoretically is considered safer because it does not directly expose people to the actual coronavirus. So far, it has only been tested in mice.
Dr. Gregory Poland, a vaccine researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is among those worried about the risks of injecting a large group of people with a vaccine that has only been through minimal testing in humans.
"I dont see how this is possible, he told Reuters, referring to Inselspitals plan.
LESSONS UNLEARNED?
The war on COVID-19 is haunted by lessons from the fight against another virus a decade ago.
In the spring of 2009, the H1N1 swine flu virus emerged in the United States and Mexico and spread worldwide. Within weeks, the World Health Organization(WHO) declared it the first pandemic since 1968.
Wealthier governments that had provisional contracts with vaccine makers immediately exercised them, effectively monopolizing the global vaccine supply," according to Hatchett and numerous official reports. The U.S. alone ordered 250 million doses, and Australia,Brazil, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Britain all had vaccine.
Under pressure from the WHO, those countries ultimately committed to share 10% of their stockpiles with poorer nations. But due to production and distribution snarls, only about 77 million doses were shipped far less than needed and only after the disease had peaked in many regions.
If an effective vaccine emerges for the new coronavirus, a replay is possible, experts in pandemic preparedness say. None of the global health authorities consulted by Reuters believes there will be sufficient supplies to satisfy the immediate demand. Governments will be under tremendous pressure to immunize their own citizenry and get life back to normal, so hoarding remains a serious risk.
Ronald St. John, a physician who has held government posts on infectious disease control in the United States and Canada, expects a similar scenario with vaccines.
There is going to be a lot of self-interest in terms of the production, he said.
BARDA explicitly gives preference to vaccine projects promising U.S. production capacity.
We're asking the American taxpayer to give a lot to the vaccine effort, so its important to ensure U.S. access to any successful vaccine, said Bright, BARDAs recent chief.
But he added that BARDA also is encouraging the companies it backs to build manufacturing capacity outside the United States, so we can have a global supply all at once.
Many governments are pouring money into vaccine initiatives with expectations that they will be first in line if a viable vaccine emerges.
Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings Inc, a San Diego biotech, is receiving up to $10 million from the Singapore government to develop its mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine candidate in partnership with the Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School. If the vaccine is approved, Singapore gets first access, said Arcturus CEO Joseph Payne. Everything after that, he said, goes to whoever pays for it.
Arcturus is not responsible for the ethics of distribution - governments are - but in order for governments to get the vaccine, they need to pay for it, Payne said. The country that will win is the country that stockpiles multiple vaccines at risk.
The company raised $80.5 million this week from a common stock public offering.
In China, a major global producer of vaccines, the government is backing several coronavirus vaccine projects, raising the prospect it will inoculate its 1.4 billion people first.
One government-backed effort, by Sinovac Biotech Ltd. , is already testing vaccine candidates in humans and awaiting initial data..
Sinovac got 60 million yuan ($8.4 million) in low-rate credit lines through a discount loan program supported by Chinas central bank. Government officials quickly made land available for the company to build production plants, including a factory meant to produce up to 100 million doses a year of its coronavirus vaccine.
Sinovac would not discuss how much public money is being invested. The relevant government agencies declined requests for comment.
On Friday, the World Health Organization announced a landmark collaboration across the international community to raise $8 billion to accelerate the coronavirus vaccine development and ensure equitable access worldwide to any successful vaccine. Countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas announced their participation, but the United States and China, two of the worlds biggest pharma forces, did not.
There will be no U.S. official participation, a spokesman for the U.S. mission in Geneva told Reuters, adding that the U.S. supports global cooperation to develop a vaccine.
Broader questions about U.S. policy on international vaccine distribution are still under consideration within the Trump administration, according to a member of the White House coronavirus task force who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. The official noted that the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development are spending nearly $500 million to assist with the COVID-19 response internationally.
A WHO spokeswoman said Fridays announcement was the beginning of a global collaboration and we would welcome more countries coming on board. China did not respond to a request for comment.
People involved in the global vaccine race told Reuters that the greatest incentive for countries to promise to share coronavirus vaccines may be the uncertainty around which ones will work.
Since no country can be sure the candidates it backs will prove successful, committing to sharing with other nations can help assure theyll have an initial supply to inoculate health care workers and other critical populations.
"That's enlightened self-interest, as well as a global public good," said Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease expert and director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity
In a tense scene from the 2011 movie Contagion, now making a comeback on streaming services as life imitates pandemic art, a heroic scientist pulls a sample out of a freezer at her lab late one night.
She injects herself and heads to a crowded hospital where her father, a doctor who continued treating his patients during the outbreak, is dying of a mysterious new flu-like virus.
Im testing my vaccine, she tells him with a smile as she rips off her goggles and mask despite his objections and kisses his clammy forehead. By day 133 of the fictional timeline, less than five months after Gwyneth Paltrows patient zero contracted the deadly disease, officials are pulling birthdays in a lottery to determine who gets the vaccine first.
Unfortunately, in real life it will take more than a trial of one to find a vaccine for COVID-19, which has been widely heralded as the key to getting back to our pre-pandemic lives. The time frame of at least 12-to-18 months, mentioned by Dr. Anthony Fauci, part of U.S. President Donald Trumps coronavirus task force, at a televised meeting in early March, has become a benchmark in the race to find it.
Thats just an estimate and not the start of a clock. But it would be the fastest development of a vaccine in human history. There are a few things that give some scientists hope it could happen, if we get lucky, from advances in science, to infusions of cash, to manufacturing vaccines before we even know if they work. There are also plenty of real challenges.
Twelve-to-18 months is an incredibly optimistic timeline, said Natasha Crowcroft, director of the Centre for Vaccine Preventable Diseases, and a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Nobodys done this before.
Under normal circumstances, new vaccines take several years to develop. The fastest ever was for mumps, at four years.
The Ebola vaccine took five.
I dont think its wrong to be optimistic, and I dont think anybody really knows the answer, Crowcroft added. According to the World Health Organization, as of April 20 there were five vaccines in clinical trials around the world, including the first in human trials, a messenger RNA candidate from U.S. biotech company Moderna. There are also 71 candidates at the preclinical stage.
Back in January, before COVID-19 even had a name, Chinese scientists were able to quickly sequence the genetic code of the virus, thanks to leaps forward in science, said Crowcroft. That gave the world a big head start.
Researchers are also trying to make some of the usual steps of a clinical trial happen in parallel, she said.
Clinical trials usually progress in measured steps to examine safety and effectiveness, starting with animals and then moving to humans in bigger sample sizes and different age groups, before a vaccine or drug can get approval and then be manufactured and distributed.
Its usually so expensive to take a vaccine through all the steps. Pharmaceutical companies dont want to spend money on a step they might not need if it fails a previous step, said Crowcroft. Many vaccines get caught in the valley of death, a promising idea from researchers without the money to take it through a trial. But given the global emergency, big money is flowing from governments that are taking on that risk for the public good.
Scientists at Oxford University in the U.K., with the help of funding from the British government, jabbed their first volunteer in the arm this week in the first phase of a human clinical trial. Their vaccine contains the genetic sequence of the club-shaped spike protein on the outer coat of SARS-CoV-2 and uses a harmless chimpanzee virus to deliver it, according to news releases on their website. The hope is that this will trick the body into thinking it has COVID-19 and trigger the immune system so that it will be ready to attack if it comes into contact with the actual virus.
The team was actually already working on a vaccine for Disease X, the next big one, without knowing what that would be, so they were easily able to pivot, lead researcher Sarah Gilbert told The Lancet.
At the same time, production of the vaccine is being scaled up to be ready for larger trials, and future rollout, if it works.
Philanthropist Bill Gates has the same idea on a bigger scale. He told the Daily Shows Trevor Noah in early April that the Gates Foundation would fund factories for seven of the most promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates, even though it would mean throwing away billions on vaccines that dont work out.
The Gates Foundation did not provide more specifics on where the factories might be or what vaccine candidates theyd produce when contacted this week by the Star.
But even with these time-saving measures, there are still many unknowns.
A major one, said Claire Cupples, former dean of science and professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at Simon Fraser University, is that we still dont understand how strong the immune response is to the virus. People whove had it should develop antibodies and have some type of immunity. But we dont have enough science to prove that because the virus is so new.
The immune response might just not be very strong at all, so that really is quite a concern in my mind, she said.
Its going to be a challenge to get a strong response from a vaccine, and would that be enough to protect people?
Because theres still so much we dont know, its possible that strengthening the immune response might actually make it worse, Cupples said.
While coronaviruses are more accurate at replicating themselves than, for example, flu, which keeps mutating so much that we need a new vaccine each year, there is still no vaccine for the coronaviruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), or common colds.
Certainly the fact that other coronaviruses keep on coming back year after year, and presumably we dont have a good response to them, is another thing that suggests that getting a vaccine might be really difficult, Cupples said.
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Even in an emergency, we still need to do our due diligence and vaccines are held to a higher standard because they expose healthy people to risk, rather than offering sick people without options something that might help.
If we turn around a really crummy vaccine and make people sick, thats going to set back vaccine acceptance for decades, she said.
This has happened before. In 1976, a vaccine for swine flu was pushed through in the U.S., even though a feared epidemic never happened. The vaccine caused Guillain-Barr syndrome, a rare condition that causes nerve damage in about one in 100,000 people.
Trudo Lemmens, professor and Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Toronto, said its definitely acceptable to prioritize clinical trials of a vaccine in a pandemic and to speed up the review process by health authorities. But its important to make sure were not shortcutting the important steps of evidence gathering that have to take place.
Clinical trials should be assessed by independent monitoring committees that can examine data and research. There should be full transparency, including with preclinical data, which is usually kept secret.
If a vaccine is rolled out, researchers should continue collecting and sharing data so they can correct any issues that arise, he added.
Even if we do get to that point, said James Tiessen, an associate professor and director of Health Services Management at Ryersons Ted Rogers School of Management, theres plenty of work still involved.
Canada has very little, if any, vaccine production capacity and would have to rely on other suppliers, as it does for the flu vaccine. But officials would probably be able to manage, he said.
We could end up with not just one vaccine, but two or three, one for older people and one for others, for example. So the challenge is just going to be volume and determining who to give it to.
Tiessen said hes been impressed so far with the unprecedented amount of worldwide co-operation on the science, which is ironic given our borders are otherwise closed.
Thats also something that makes Cupples hopeful, the fact the government, industry, and academic institutions are working together, that theyre publishing their results quickly and not behind paywalls.
Even so, its entirely possible we may never find a vaccine.
We dont have one for HIV, for example, which first appeared in the early 1980s. Thats why its important to also continue looking for treatments such as antiretrovirals, Cupples said, and better understand who gets very sick and who gets mild or no symptoms (aside from factors like age and other medical conditions).
All of these things can be done at the same time as other teams of scientists continue to work on dozens of fledging vaccine candidates.
Its a good thing to have so many at this point, added Crowcroft.
We dont know which ones are going to be the best, but we also dont know what best means.
One vaccine could work 100 per cent of the time, but have side-effects, while another could be 70 per cent effective, but safer.
At this stage were going so fast, what we really need is a lot of choice, she said.
If any one of these approaches that people are trying, if any one of them makes it through to the end, why not?
BERLIN (Reuters) - German biotech company BioNTech, which has approval for human trials of potential coronavirus vaccines, has lately received several approaches about a possible takeover but has rejected them, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
BioNTech chief Ugur Sahin said the company had been approached by several players in the industry, Welt am Sonntag newspaper quoted him as saying, without identifying any of the potential interested parties.
"Takeovers are out of the question for the majority shareholders and for us anyway. Our vision is to build a biopharmaceutical company that addresses the medical needs of the 21st century," Sahin told the newspaper.
A BioNTech spokeswoman confirmed the content of the interview.
Earlier this week, shares in BioNTech soared after Germany gave the green light for human trials of potential coronavirus vaccines it is developing with Pfizer.
BioNTech said it was developing four vaccine candidatesunder a programme with Pfizer named BNT162 in what is the fourth trial worldwide of a vaccine targeting the virus.
(Reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by David Holmes)
Actors Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson have bothbeen approved to donate blood as part of an effort to find a vaccine for coronavirus aka COVID-19. The couplehad beenamong some of the earliest high-profilecelebritiesto test positive for the virus back in early March during the filming ofan as-yet-untitled Elvis Presley biopic in Australia. Both had immediately gone into isolation while recovering, keeping their fans updated regularly via social media of their progress and experience.After several weeks of quarantine, they were cleared toreturn home to Los Angeles to continue their recovery.
With the coronavirus continuing to spread and countries practicing social distancing and lockdowns, researchers around the worldare continuing to race to find a vaccine. Oneof the pre-requisites continues to be improving the antibody detection tests and thenidentifying individuals who have recovered from the virus and have an antibody count high enough to be useful for study and testing.After Hanks and Wilson'sreturn, they submitted to be tested for the antibodies to see if they could help contribute.
Related:How Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson Caught Coronavirus
During an interview with NPR,Hanks revealedtheir samples had been found to have the antibodies and were approvedto donate blood to organizations that are currently working on finding a vaccine. They're not just waiting for the scientists to come to them, they're also reaching out proactively as well, saying, "We have not only been approached, we have said, Do you want our blood? Can we give plasma?" Should the scientists develop a cure from their blood, the ever-helpful Hanks added that he already has a name to suggest for the would-be cure, "Hank-ccine."
The couple, both aged 63,are just shy of the highest age-risk group, which is currently set at age 65. They were also fortunate not to have suffered the worst of the complications, but it still was serious, especially for Wilson. Hanks noted, "Rita went through a tougher time than I did. She had a much higher fever. She had lost her sense of taste and sense of smell." Now that they have also recovered, Hanks has found himself busy once again, recently hosting the return of Saturday Night Live withan "At Home Edition."
Both Hanks and Wilson have films ready for release that have been sidelined by the ongoing pandemic. Wilson's drama Love Is Love Is Love had been slated to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, but that's no longer in the cards. Meanwhile, Hanks' WWII film, Greyhound, had been ready for release in March but was first pushed to June before being taken off of the release slate entirelyuntil studios work out a new theatrical release model. Or until audiences are safe to venture out to the box office once again, perhaps thanks to aHankccine.
More: That Tom Hanks & Castaway Volleyball In Coronavirus Quarantine Photo Is FAKE
Source: NPR
Pokemon Company Apologizes For Promoting Sword & Shield With Dewgong
In the quiet of the University of Saskatchewan's shuttered campus, there is one constant beacon of light and hope. Dr. Volker Gerdts and his team of researchers are working in shifts around the clock to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus and feeling the pressure to move even faster.
"There is a real sense of urgency," Dr. Gerdts says.
"We have a highly motivated team, and everybody is willing to step up and do as much as they can. And so this is really, you know, a race against the disease."
Gerdts is the director and chief executive officer of the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization - International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac). The lab in Saskatoon is one of the most advanced infectious disease research facilities in the world and has been evaluating COVID-19 vaccine models for several weeks.
A recent $28-million funding boost from the federal and provincial government to enhance its COVID-19 research capacity to testantivirals, drugs, and therapeutics has been helping fast-track that research even more.
And on April 23,Prime Minister Justin Trudeauannounced a $1.1 billion national strategy for medical research to fight COVID-19, including:
VIDO-InterVac is already at the forefront of an extraordinary global effort to halt the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus. It's one of a handful of labs in the world with a potential vaccine at the animal testing phase.
The new federal funding includes $23 millionto support pre-clinical testing and clinical trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, essential steps to ensuring that vaccines are effective and safe for human use.
"What was my reaction? Ecstatic,"Gerdtssays. "Good to see the commitment from the Government to fund a Canadian vaccine for Canadians."
Next month could be a turning point for VIDO-InterVac, when ferrets chosen because their respiratory system is similar to that of humans are exposed to the novel coronavirus to see if the lab's vaccine candidate works. VIDO-InterVac is also testing other researchers' vaccines on hamsters.
Gerdts says the research is moving at an accelerated rate, and everyone is looking for a breakthrough before the pandemic's next potential wave of infections.
"The concern that we all have at the moment is whether there is another phase to this or not. And so having a vaccine for the next phase is absolutely critical. It will allow us to improve what we call herd immunity, to get more people vaccinated more people with an immune response in the population, and the better we all are protected in the future."
Gerdts' team is part of the World Health Organization's pandemic vaccine network, made up of expert groups of nearly 200 scientists and researchers from around the world.
They're working in tandem and exchanging notes in real time on medical servers and through weekly phone calls. There's even a vaccine tracker built by the Vaccine Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine that monitors the 60-plus COVID vaccines in development and their progress.
It's a remarkable coordinated effort that is breaking down scientific borders and academic bragging rights.
"The most important thing in all of this is not to be first," says virologist Paul Duprex from the University of Pittsburgh, who is part of the WHO vaccine braintrust.
Duprex says scientists usually compete to publish their findings first, for the credit that comes with it. The new virus has changed that, and there will be plenty of time to publish later.
"Let's just cut the crap and move forward and work together and be collegial. This is a worldwide problem, and this is a worldwide issue that we should solve together," he says.
Duprex adds that the WHO collaboration is speeding up the process to find a successful vaccine among the dozens in development.
"I'm really glad that we've got lots and lots of different options, because you know what's going to happen. Those vaccines are going to faIl at different stages in the testing process," says Duprex. "So therefore, if we have backups upon backups and backups, that allows us to get something across the finish line."
Infectious disease researcher Allison McGeer says this new, faster pace of global research means a vaccine could be developed more quickly and that could save lives.
"It's critically important to do it faster," says McGeer, who is with the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, part of Sinai Health in Toronto.
McGeer says that doesn't mean shortcutting safety trials, but rather streamlining research processes to get a safe and effective vaccine into people's arms faster.
"That allows a certain amount of creativity about how to do that. Whereas normally people would say, 'well, you know, I'm just not sure about that and I want to be absolutely sure about it.' Now there's a good reason for doing it differently and you can make processes for developing vaccines faster in general, which we all agree would be a good thing."
At VIDO-InterVac, Gerdts says if his team's potential vaccine passes the animal test next month, human trials will follow in the fall and pave the way for a possible vaccine in a year.
The new government funding is also building manufacturing capacity in Canada, including at VIDO-Intervac, which hopes to be in a position to produce up to 20 million doses of new vaccine during a pandemic.
And while all the work behind finding a vaccine is part of a global effort, Gerdts says it's a uniquely Canadian one,too.
"We're a Canadian team making a vaccine for Canadians, and so it's our highest priority to make sure that this vaccine will be available for Canadians. And we have received funding from the federal government and the provincial government to do this kind of research, so it's important that we make sure that Canadians will have access to our vaccine."
And while this pandemic is still in its early stages, Gerdts is already looking ahead to the next one.
He says good science can simulate the evolution of a pathogen in the lab, to help predict the next deadly virus and give the world time to prepare. The lessons of this pandemic, Dr. Gerdts says, are already too harsh.
"We're still talking about a year before we have a vaccine ready. People are dying right now, and the cost to the global economy is already in the trillions. We need to have vaccines ready for whatever the next pathogen might be. And this is where we have to push the envelope."
The first nation to develop a vaccine for Covid-19 could have an economic advantage as well as a tremendous public-health achievement. Doses will be limited initially as suppliers ramp up, and a country will focus on inoculating most of its own population first. Even with extraordinary international collaboration among multiple companies, it could be years before a vaccine is produced at a scale sufficient to help the entire world. The first country to the finish line will be first to restore its economy and global influence. America risks being second.
China...
