For 42-year-old Hannu Rajaniemi, the decision to shift his synthetic biology start-up's focus from creating cancer therapeutics to making a Covid-19 vaccine brought a sense of calm. Because watching coronavirus infect the world and not being part of the solution caused the scientist more torment than the complicated task of creating a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic.
"Before March the 10th, before we decided to jump on this, I was definitely feeling very anxious very, very worried about what was coming," Rajaniemi tellsCNBC Make It. "This is of course before things started to get really bad, but yeah there was some sense of powerlessness and worry that was in the background.
"Once we jumped on [creating a vaccine] that actually went away."
On that day, Rajaniemi was speaking in New Brunswick, New Jersey at a large biopharma companyabout the future of the industry. The company, which Rajaniemi declined to name, has a robust Covid-19 response program, and being there got Rajaniemi thinking his company's research could be applicable to fighting the virus.
So from March 10 through March 16, Rajaniemi pivoted his Cambridge, Massachusetts-headquarteredbusiness, Helix Nanotechnologies,from working to build a cancer vaccine to inventing a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
Within a week, "we had a significant amount of funds committed [to fund the Covid-19 vaccine research], we had a plan and we essentially completely shifted focus," Rajaniemi tells CNBC Make It.
The week it took for Helix Nano to shift gears "was pretty intense,"Rajaniemi tells CNBC Make It.
He didn't track his hours, but Rajaniemi remembers working through the night at least once.
Helix Nano was able to raise money from its "extremely supportive" investors for the pivot in about about 24 hours, he says.
The Helix Nano team dressed for a charity event, before the Covid-19 pandemic. Left to right:Taylor Gill, Nikhil Dhar, Nikolai Eroshenko (a co-founder), Hannu Rajaniemi (also a co-founder), Marianna Keaveney. (Photo is missing a more recent addition to the team, Justin Quinn.)
Photo courtesy: Helix Nano
Since the biotechnology Helix Nano was working on was flexible enough to also work for viruses, "we were able to articulate an accelerated path to the company's original mission push the technology forward rapidly while fighting the pandemic, then bring it back to cancer," he said. According to Rajaniemi, one investor said the Covid-19 pandemic "could be THE opportunity you needed" to show what the team can really accomplish.
As for his six employees, Rajaniemi inspired them to get behind the change by focusing on the broader benefit to society that a Covid-19 vaccine could provide. (Covid-19 is "rapidly becoming America's leading cause of death," according to The Washington Post from April 6 to April 12, for example,more people died from Covid-19 than cancer.)
"This is not a side project, or a way to get some extra money from investors in a crisis: This is the mission," Rajaniemi says he told his staff. "It might be the most important thing any of us ever do."
And it is "quite empowering" to be working on something that could help the world, Rajaniemi says. "There is this strong sense of clarity.... This is what we have to focus on. And so I think that's actually made it easier."
Helix Nano's technology made for a fairly easy pivot.
Rajaniemi, who was born and raised in Finland, founded Helix Nanotechnologies in 2013 with small angel checks from friends and family as well as grants to focus on cancer therapeutics.
And the business was personal: In 2015, Rajaniemi lost his 67-year-old mother to metastatic breast cancer.
From there, Helix Nano was accepted into Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator in 2017 and raised money from various sources includingStarlight Ventures and the Data Collective.
Some of the work Helix Nano was doing toward a cancer drug had already been showing "very promising efficacy in human lung cancer tumors engrafted into mice" before the pandemic, says Rajaniemi. "We were about to start raising a Series A on that data. The next fundraise would have taken us just short of human clinical trials."
The work centered around manipulating messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), or genetic code that acts as a messenger in the human body. Helix Nanotechnology's strategy for generating a novel coronavirus vaccine also centers on mRNA.
Helix Nanotechnology's cancer drug would have mRNA deliver a message to kill cancers cells andattract immune cells to the tumor. Its cancer vaccine would use mRNA deliver a message to make a cancer cell more visible to the human body's immune system so that it could attack the cancer.
The idea behind that cancer vaccine is the same as Helix Nano's Covid-19 vaccine, except that the vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 goes after the virus instead of cancer cells, says Rajaniemi.The mRNA delivers a message to make parts of the novel coronavirus visible to the immune system.
Helix Nano lab in Cambridge, Mass.
Photo courtesy Helix Nano
Because mRNA is manipulated the same way, "regardless of the instructions it contains," Helix Nanotechnologies had to change no infrastructure or hardware in its lab to transition from working on cancer therapeutics to a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Rajaniemi says.
"It's like computer code that can be easily changed and iterated with. Before we were making mRNA and injecting into mice, and measuring the results. Now we are also making mRNA and injecting it into mice," he says.
"That was part of the attraction," according to Rajaniemi.
Rajaniemi believes that the vaccine he and his team are creating is important because he says it is different from other novel coronavirus vaccines in the works. (There aremore than 40 SARS-CoV-2 vaccines currently under development, according tovaccine consultant Stanley Plotkin, whoinvented the rubella vaccine in 1964.)
Rajaniemi explains vaccine technology with a metaphor: "A vaccine is like a mug shot that you show the immune system" by injecting it into the body. "So it's a picture of the bad guy that the immune system goes after," he says.
A potential problem, however, is that viruses mutate, which means a specific "mug shot" might no longer look like the mutated "bad guy" the immune system needs to fight.
So one of the approaches Helix Nano is pursuing "amounts to essentially showing so many mug shots from so many different angles that, no matter how the virus changes, it will be very hard for it to completely disguise itself [from] the immune system," Rajaniemi says. The idea is akin to flooding the system with mugshots a "saturation," Rajaniemi calls it.
"While SARS-CoV-2 appears to be mutating more slowly than, say, influenza, we can't discount the possibility that as the virus changes, the first wave of vaccines may lose efficacy," he says.
"The approach we are developing should be robust against this, and may even provide protection from all future coronaviruses. So we want to help solve this problem once and for all, not just for this pandemic but future ones as well."
Indeed, producing a vaccine that can identify and protect against multiple potential mutations of the virus "will be of critical importance," says vaccine specialistBarbara Rath, the co-founder and chair of The Vienna Vaccine Safety Initiative.
"If we can, we'd like to end up with a vaccine that will protect us not only from one specific pandemic coronavirus, but from other variants of SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, as well," she says, referring to the coronaviruses that cause Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
"Whether or not this is possible ... is not yet entirely clear, but it is feasible," Rath says.
On April 3, Helix Nanotechnologies injected its first novel coronavirus vaccines into miceto see if there is an immune response, and over the course of a few weeks it will be testing hundreds more vaccine designs by injecting them into mice.
In two to three months, its vaccines could be ready to move to clinical trials in humans, Rajaniemi says.
That means the now familiar 12- to 18-month timeframe "is probably realistic" for getting a vaccine to market, Rajaniemi says (though he personally believes that can be accelerated).
The timeframe also depends on whether the Food and Drug Administration hastens its approval process for vaccines and how much manufacturing capacity there is to produce the vaccine. (Vaccine expert Plotkin says there is currently enough capacity to produce a vaccine for the United States, but not for the world population, though the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently pledged to invest in manufacturing infrastructure.)
In the meantime, Rajaniemi, who as a theoretical physicist does not have to work in the lab, is in constant touch with his team in Cambridge while workingsix to seven days a week from his home in San Francisco, he says.
But then, he wasn't expecting it to be easy.
"It's certainly been quite intense it feels like we've jumped off a cliff and are building an airplane in mid-air," Rajaniemi says.
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Dozens of companies and an army of researchers are trying to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but getting one approved in 18 months or less is far from a sure thing.
Dozens of companies and an army of researchers are trying to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but getting one approved in 18 months or less is far from a sure thing.
Photo: Jeffrey Hamilton/Getty Images
Dozens of companies and an army of researchers are trying to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but getting one approved in 18 months or less is far from a sure thing.
Dozens of companies and an army of researchers are trying to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but getting one approved in 18 months or less is far from a sure thing.
The COVID-19 vaccine rush: Is 12 to 18 months realistic?
For more coverage, visit our complete coronavirus section here.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Trump administrations point man in the fight against COVID-19, has said a safe vaccine for the virus could be ready for use in 12 to 18 months. Thats the same timeline the World Health Organization is working on.
History suggests it will take longer. The vaccine that holds the record for fastest approval time, Mumpsvax (mumps virus vaccine live), took four years before it was ready. Scientists have been trying to develop an HIV vaccine for decades without success.
On Wednesday, Severin Schwan, the head of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, described Faucis 12-18 month estimate as ambitious and said a vaccine most likely wont be ready until the end of 2021 at the earliest.
With confirmed global coronavirus cases now topping 2.5 million, the pressure to develop a vaccine is mounting, and dozens of firms and scores of scientists are working toward that goal. Here are some of the contenders:
Moderna bankrolled: Last week, Modernas mRNA-1273 vaccine received a $483 million grant from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to ramp up late-stage trials and vaccine production. The company intends to start a phase 3 study in the second quarter and could start phase 3 this fall.
The vaccine uses a genetic molecule called mRNA as its base. Scientists generate the mRNA in the lab and, rather than directly injecting SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus) into patients, instead will introduce this mRNA.
The bad news is no vaccine built from a virus genetic material has ever earned approval. Because of mRNAs unproven track record, global analytics firm Clarivate estimated Modernas vaccine has just a 5% chance of success and that approval would take 5.2 years. Successful results in phases 2 and 3 could change those predictions, a Clarivate spokesperson told the drug industry publication Fierce Pharma.
Inovio "confident": Clarivate also evaluated biotech company Inovios DNA vaccine INO-4800, which is now in clinical testing. Clarivates algorithm predicted a 15% probability of success for the vaccine and approval timeline of 5.5 years.
Inovio told Fierce Pharma it remains "highly confident in the viability and likelihood of success of our vaccine candidate for the novel coronavirus."
Janssen's gamble: Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, aims to start human trials for its vaccine by September 2020 at the latest. The company says it plans to be able to manufacture 600 to 900 million coronavirus vaccine doses by the first quarter of 2021, increasing to a billion over the year.
"Normally, companies would not invest in their manufacturing scale-up until they were deep into phase 2 and starting phase 3. Theyd have more clarity that a product was going to work," Phyllis Arthur, vice president for infectious diseases and diagnostic policy at Biotechnology Innovation Organization, told Quartz.
A British vaccine by autumn? A University of Oxford team will begin human trials of a potential coronavirus vaccine Thursday, according to the Independent.
One of the scientists said if the trials are successful, millions of doses of vaccine could be ready by the fall. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said reaching this stage in normal times would "take years."
Hancock announced he was allocating 20 million ($24 million) to the Oxford team and a further 22.5 million to Imperial College, whose scientists are also working on a vaccine.
Israeli scientist targets virus weak link: Prof. Jonathan Gershoni from Tel Aviv University's (TAU) School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology says his laboratory is "two-thirds of the way" toward developing a vaccine for COVID-19.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Gershoni is focusing on the virus's Receptor Binding Motif (RBM), part of the virus' "spike" protein, which attaches itself and infects a target human cell. Once the viral membrane fuses with that cell, the genetic blueprint of the virus can enter the cell and begin infection.
"The idea is to recreate, to reconstitute, to construct an RBM of COVID-19 virus and use it as the vaccine," he told the Post. "That is to say, you would inject a small 50 amino-acid sequence and it would allow our immune system to focus on it and create antibodies that would directly target the virus at its weak spot."
Development of such an RBM-based vaccine should take months, but it then would need to be tested in clinical trials, taking up to a year, Gershoni says.
200,000 doses in Texas: Dr. Peter Hortez, a dean at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, told MSNBC his team has already 200,000 doses of a coronavirus vaccine ready for human clinical trials. Even so, he says a 12-18 month timeline for a vaccine would be "unprecedented.
One of the biggest obstacles to fast-tracking a vaccine are the time-consuming human trials necessary to ensure its safety while demonstrating its efficacy.But given the magnitude of the pandemic, some members of Congress are suggesting a short cut.
Volunteers allowing themselves to be intentionally infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 could accelerate the development of a vaccine, said 35 members of the U.S. House of Representatives in a letter Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the journal Science reported. The controversial strategy is backed by both Democratic and Republican members of the group.
The legislators also are pushing the idea of parallel, simultaneous testing of different doses of a vaccine rather than the traditional sequential testing, which starts with participants getting the lowest dose first and gradually building up the dosage as the trial proceeds. The strategy could expedite testing from small groups to larger trials.
Scientists are divided on "human challenge" trials, with some arguing the risks are too great.
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Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Digital Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate
UM Researchers Working To Develop COVID-19 Vaccine
University of Montana researchers are working on a vaccination for COVID-19. The Center for Translational Medicine received $2.5 million in funding for the project from the National Institutes of Health.
Director Jay Evans said the lab develops vaccines for the flu, tuberculosis and deadly opioids such as fentanyl. He explained there is always a sense of urgency to the work they do, but coronavirus means even more immediacy.
"Youre coming into work everyday, in the midst of this shutdown: Its important to know that youre doing it for a reason," Evans said.
The 40-person lab specializes in vaccine ingredients that stimulate the immune system. In this case, the team only needs one part of the coronavirus to work their magic. They are trying to find a way to stop the virus' spike protein, the part in charge of clinging onto human cells.
"So if you can block that interaction with an antibody, you can stop that person from getting infected," Evans said.
But working with coronavirus means lab members are taking additional safety measures while working on the vaccine. Only about a dozen people are allowed in the lab at one time, and as many team as possible are working from home.
The lab is also working with the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and Boston Childrens Hospital. Evans expects a years-long process to get from lab testing to manufacturing a vaccine at scale, including up to a year and a half before entering the first phase of clinical trials.
The underlying theme of the protest was that Vermont, bleeding young people who cannot find the kind of jobs that would allow them to afford to live here, cannot afford to lose already limited four-year college opportunities.
If there was ever an example of the overarching point, that Vermont needs more smart people, it came two days later, when another protest took place here.
The protest, demanding that Governor Phil Scott relax his stay-at-home orders, was organized by a gun-rights group, even though gun shops have remained open because Scott deemed them essential. You can find guns and ammo in Vermont much easier than you can disinfectant wipes.
The organizers had hoped to cause the same disruption and gain the same attention the pro-education protesters did. But, even in Vermont, its hard to tie up traffic with a handful of pickup trucks. The protest outside the State House drew more journalists than demonstrators, who never numbered more than a dozen.
One demonstrator complained he had lost both of his jobs and worried about feeding his kids. He seemed pretty sympathetic, until I learned the yellow DONT TREAD ON ME" flag he was waving was signed by Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy nut job who claimed the Sandy Hook massacre of schoolchildren in Connecticut was staged as a ruse for implementing gun control.
Inside the State House, Governor Scott was sympathetic to the protesters but wouldnt budge on his aggressive mitigation measures, which have been credited with making Vermont one of the states with the lowest infection and fatality rates.
Theres nobody more frustrated, more eager to get the economy going than me, but Im going to continue to make decisions based on the science, Scott said.
Scott, a Republican, is the antithesis of his Georgia counterpart, Brian Kemp, who is defying science in rushing to get his states economy up and running again. Scott is from the same mold as other independent-minded New England governors, including his friends, neighbors and fellow Republicans, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who take their COVID-19 counsel from doctors and scientists, not Fox News.
Outside the State House, the temperatures hovered around freezing and the wind whipped snow flurries, mocking spring. A group of nurses from Central Vermont Medical Center, wearing masks, blue scrubs, and weary eyes, showed up to stare down the protesters. They take care of people infected with COVID-19 and didnt want the protest to go unchallenged.
One of the nurses held a handmade sign that said: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Someone in a passing car agreed with the nurses, shouting at protesters, Dont infect the rest of us, you idiots!
The pro-education protest got results, at least temporarily. Trustees postponed voting on the plan to close the three colleges.
The protest on Wednesday, which was scheduled to last five hours but petered out after two, worked, too, at least in that it gave a bunch of bored reporters a reason to go outside and cover something besides the governors daily briefing.
It also succeeded in making it clear that we need more than a vaccine against the coronavirus.
Life wont go back to anything resembling normal until there is a vaccine for COVID-19. But, while theyre at it, heres hoping researchers are able to come up with a vaccine for ignorance, because it poses a bigger, longer-lasting threat to normality than the pandemic.
And when that second, great, scientific breakthrough comes, Brian Kemp has first dibs.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.
MISSOULA There's a long legacy of medical research in Western Montana, from Rocky Mountain Labs to GSK in Hamilton, and on to the University of Montana. Now, that know-how might help resolve the coronavirus pandemic.
UM just received 2-and-a-half million dollars to help find a "candidate" for a COVID-19 vaccine, telling Senator Steve Daines the labs are already hard at work, building on a foundation of progress on everything from the flu to opioid addiction.
"It's exciting. It's not only exciting for me," said U.M. Center for Transitional Medicine Director Dr. Jay Evans. "It's also exciting for the people in the lab, working on something with such a high local and national concern."
"It reminds me of what happened back in the early Fifties with polio and Dr. Salk. When they announced they had a vaccine for polo everybody cheered," said Daines. "The announcement, hopefully sooner versus later when we have a vaccine for COVID-19, you're going to have a nation cheer. And to think the University of Montana is going to have a big part in that is very exciting."
"We're looking at different types of antigens, different parts of the virus that can be used. We're looking at different amino stimulants that trigger the type of immune response that you want against a viral infection. And we're looking at different ways of delivering the vaccine," said Evans. "All those technologies exist, and our platform pair here at U of M, and so we're combining them in different ways to try to solve this problem with coronavirus. And make the most effective, safe vaccine that could be used in people."
Daines says the UM focus fits with his concern to have more federal money to help with research, not just treating the pandemic's "symptoms".
"I found that there wasn't enough resources placed against a cure," said the Senator. "And that cure is getting these vaccines, these drugs, these therapeutics that will protect the American people. Protect Montanans. And I was able to secure 10-billion dollars in that funding package that focused exactly on that."
However, there are other challenges as well. Evans told the senator that lab space is at a premium. That's something that they'd like to solve in the future here at the University of Montana.
Some relief will come by moving labs to a new building this summer. But UM says the real solution would be a new building for an institute.
There's a number of things that we do that have national import and which most of those fundings are going out of state, and the jobs are going out of state," said U.M. V.P. for Research and Creative Scholarship Scoot Whittenburg. "And we could actually do some more efforts here and actually keep more of those jobs and more of those dollars here."
There were 15-people when the former GSK researchers came to UM 4-years ago. Now there are 40.
Duration: 02:06 1 day ago
Five weeks ago, Neal Browning became a human guinea pig. He volunteered to be the second ever patient to be injected with an experimental vaccine for COVID-19. Inside Editions Jim Moret caught up with Browning to see how hes feeling after he received his second vaccination, one month after the first. The Seattle area engineer reports that hes feeling totally normal, but he wont know if the experiment is a success until next year.
NEW BRUNSWICK, NJIn a major setback to efforts to combat the relentless global pandemic, a potential Covid-19 vaccine from a major pharmaceutical giant reportedly hit a snag Thursday after extensive tests confirmed the once-promising method of inoculation was actually just a shotgun. Despite very encouraging trials in which every subject who received the vaccine developed complete immunity to the novel coronavirus, further study has revealed several serious side effects, among them the fact that 100% of these participants also had their heads blown clean off, said Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky, explaining that the vaccine had prevented the virus from infecting any of the brain tissue or blood that was found splattered on laboratory walls, but that researchers later discovered the immunization agent had merely been a 20-gauge double-barrel shotgun. We dont know for certain if the firearms discharge is causing this severe brain damage or if the subjects were simply predisposed to such ailments, so further study is required. But it may turn out this is one of those cases where the cure is worse than the disease. Fortunately, we will soon begin human clinical trials on other possible treatments, such as jumping off bridges and ingesting huge handfuls of tranquilizers. In his most recent press briefing, President Trump dismissed the new findings and said Americans had nothing to lose if they wanted to use shotguns as a preventative measure.
As the U.S. moves past 50,000 coronavirus deaths, our team in Washington, D.C. is examining the issues that likely won't be featured tonight during primetime cable news -- including how federal lawmakers are playing a role in the reopening of their states. You can watch our D.C. team's original reporting in a livestream at 9/8c.
Even as the confirmed U.S. death toll from the coronavirus soared past 50,000, Georgia, Oklahoma and Alaska began loosening lockdown orders Friday on their pandemic-wounded businesses, despite warnings from health experts that the gradual steps toward normalcy might be happening too soon.
The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought with it fear and uncertainty. Many parents are asking about when there will be a COVID-19 vaccine and what to do about routine childhood vaccinations during the pandemic. We're here to provide answers to your most common questions.
As of now [23 April], there are no specific vaccines or treatments for COVID-19. Scientists around the world are working hard to develop a vaccine against the disease. In fact, many different vaccines are being developed simultaneously, with two of them at the front of the process. Innovative approaches to vaccine development are being used, based partially in what was learn from the responses to Ebola and SARS. If successful, this will be fastest vaccine development and validation process in history.
Researchers are also looking for drugs to slow down how the virus spreads in the body and reduce the serious breathing problems it can cause in ill patients. But even with the fastest methods, the use of drugs in humans for a new disease needs to be tested to ensure safety and efficacy.
>>See how to wash your hands and cleaning tips to protect against COVID-19.
While COVID-19 is disrupting our daily lives, the short answer is yes, do try to get your child vaccinated where services are available. It is important that children and babies keep their vaccinations up to date because they protect them from serious diseases. It means that when your children can return to interacting with other children, theyll have protection from some other diseases too.
If you are unsure of whether or not your immunization service is still running as usual, please check with your health care provider. Because the COVID-19 situation is changing every day, you might find your health care providers will be adjusting their way of providing care as things change. If you cannot get to a clinic when your childs next vaccinations are due, make a note somewhere to try again as soon as the services resume.
This outbreak reminds us of how valuable vaccines are. It shows us that when there is a vaccine available for a disease, we should keep our children and ourselves up to date with that vaccination. Without the protection of vaccines, diseases can spread quickly and with terrible consequences. For example, measles and other diseases remain a constant risk. We are so fortunate to have the protection of vaccines against these diseases.
Vaccines help train our immune system to fight infections by introducing an inactivated form of a germ (bacteria or virus) into the body. Since it is inactivated, it cannot make us sick. However, it triggers our bodys immune system to produce defences called antibodies. Then, if you ever catch the germ, your bodys immune system will already know how to fight it.
>>Watch our mini parenting masterclass on getting your babys first vaccines.
Contact your health care provider, consult your local and national health authority websites and follow guidance provided by WHO and UNICEF.
Some of theprecautions you and your family can take to help avoid infection include:
In addition to all of the advice already given to parents about hand washing, physical distancing and maintaining hygiene practices, they should take extra care to protect infants from infection. Breastfeed your baby if possible. There is currently no proven research that breastmilk can transmit the virus, but you should take the usual hygiene and respiratory protection (while breastfeeding as well as at other times) to avoid respiratory transmission. Use antibacterial wipes if available to wipe down countertops and diaper-changing surfaces once a day.
Try to ensure young children have the same caregivers to reduce the number of people they come into contact with. Those caregivers should be encouraged to wash their hands regularly, avoid sharing things that go in mouths such as cups and stay away if they feel at all sick.
If your child has a sore throat, a cough or a fever, call your doctor or health service for advice before bringing them in. They may have a special arrangement at the clinic to minimise spread of infection to others.If your child has more serious symptoms, like shortness of breath or seems unusually sick, call the emergency number or take them to the nearest emergency department.
Most children with COVID-19 have mild symptoms or may have no symptoms at all. But its important to protect the elderly and others more vulnerable to serious infections. So keep your child at home if you think they have been exposed to COVID-19 or have it, but make sure to call their doctor or a health worker for advice.
As with other respiratory infections like the flu, seek care early if you or your child are having symptoms. Try to avoid going to public places (like a workplace, schools, or public transport), and dont be in contact with the elderly or immunocompromised family members. If you live with an elderly person as well, it is recommended to separate the generations in the household.
You dont need to have your child tested if he or she is healthy and not showing any symptoms (such as fever, cough or difficulty breathing). Do also make sure to take all key steps to protect your family against COVID-19.
>>Learn more about immunization
>>World Immunization Week
Bill Gates visited The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Thursday night to discuss a possible timeline for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Colbert starts off the interview by asking a question thats on all of our minds: How long will we have to live the way we are now?
Ever the pragmatist, Gates offered up a measured response: There are two ways out, one is if we get miracle therapeutics that are greater than 95% cure rate. We cant count on that. The other is a vaccine thats highly effective that we get out to the world population. Some of these vaccines well understand by this summer, well see because theyre going into humans now well see if they get this strong antibody response. And then we have to do broad safety testing and get the manufacturing going. So even a year from now, even if everything went perfectly we could start the manufacturing.
He allows that if its harder to land on an effective vaccine, the timeline could stretch to two years, but offers up a ray of hope: Every day when I see the engagement of the vaccine groups, I actually think, Wow, we can surprise people on the upside here. I have been saying 18 months, but some of these vaccines are ahead of that schedule.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations Therapeutics Accelerator program has been working hard on finding a vaccine for COVID-19, with musicians like Madonna donating $1 million to research efforts. Gates told Colbert that his foundation is currently at work on 7 vaccines and that, overall, more than 100 vaccines are being tested. Theres almost too many in a way, he said.
In a 2015 TED Talk, Gates practically predicted the COVID-19 outbreak. Earlier this month, he stopped by The Daily Show to reflect on his Nostradamus moment: One thing I feel good about is this is such a big change to the world that this time it wont be like Ebola, which was just there in West Africa or Central Africa, he said. This time, the tens of billions [of dollars] to have the diagnostics standing by, the manufacturing standing by, this time we will get ready for the next epidemic.
Colbert asked Gates to take a look into the future once more, and Gates rather bleak message sent the host into a fit of nervous laughter: I didnt want to be right, he said of his TED Talk. Then launched into a description of a possible bioterrorist attack.
The good news Im not trying to depress you is most of the work were going to do to be ready for pandemic two I call this pandemic one most of the work well do to be ready for that are also the things we need to do to minimize the threat of bioterrorism, he added, leaving the interview on a high(?) note.
