Category: Corona Virus Vaccine

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On a spring morning in 1955, a pair of press officers greeted a mob of reporters in a stately hall on the University of Michigan campus. The officers had hot news: A clinical trial of the long-awaited polio vaccine had proved it to be safe and effective. The reporters nearly rioted in their scramble to spread the word. Once they did, church bells rang, and people ran into the streets to cheer.

In the midst of our current pandemic, collective hope for a vaccine is just as palpable and regularly reinforced as it was with this weeks news of promising results from a small coronavirus vaccine test. The federal governments top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that the ultimate game changer in this will be a vaccine. President Trump assured us that a vaccine is not far off. Television hosts and pundits claim that this goal is within reach because weve beaten infectious killers, such as polio, with vaccines in the past.

But Americas experience with polio should give us pause, not hope. The first effective polio vaccine followed decades of research and testing. Once fully tested, it was approved with record speed. Then there were life-threatening manufacturing problems. Distribution problems followed. Political fights broke out. After several years, enough Americans were vaccinated that cases plummeted but they persisted in poor communities for over a decade. Polios full story should make us wary of promises that we will soon have the coronavirus under control with a vaccine.

The first polio epidemic in the United States hit Vermont in 1894, killing 18 and leaving 58 permanently paralyzed. It was only the beginning. Over the next several decades, warm-weather outbreaks became common, striking communities one year and sparing them the next, sometimes only to return later with added force. A New York City outbreak killed more than 100 people in 1907. In 1916, polio returned and killed 6,000. The disease primarily struck children. It could kill up to 25 percent of the stricken. And it left many paralyzed, consigning some to life in an iron lung.

Scientists knew polio was caused by a virus but did not know how it spread. (We know now that it was spread by consumption of food or water contaminated by the virus in fecal matter.) Then, as now, the only way to stay safe was not to be infected. Towns with cases closed movie theaters, pools, amusement parks and summer camps. They canceled long-planned fairs and festivals. Parents kept children close to home. Those who could afford to do so fled to the country. Still, cases mounted. Among three early polio vaccines developed in the 1930s, two proved ineffective, another deadly.

Finally, in April 1954, a promising vaccine, developed by Jonas Salks laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, entered a large, yearlong clinical trial. On the day in 1955 when the press officers greeted the reporters in Ann Arbor, they shared the results: The vaccine, containing inactivated polio virus, was safe. It was also 80 percent to 90 percent effective in preventing polio.

The federal government licensed the vaccine within hours. Manufacturers hastened into production. A foundation promised to buy the first $9 million worth and provide it to the nations first and second graders. A national campaign got underway.

But less than a month later, the effort ground to a halt. Officials reported six polio cases linked to a vaccine manufactured by Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, Calif. The surgeon general asked Cutter to recall its lots. The National Institutes of Health asked all manufacturers to suspend production until they met new safety standards. Federal investigators found that Cutter had failed to completely kill the virus in some vaccine batches. The flawed vaccines caused more than 200 polio cases and 11 deaths.

The vaccine program partly restarted two months later, but more mayhem followed. With the vaccine in short supply, rumors spread of black markets and unscrupulous doctors charging exorbitant fees. One vaccine manufacturer planned to vaccinate its employees children first, and then sent a letter to shareholders promising their children and grandchildren priority access, too.

States asked the federal government to create a program to ensure fair distribution. A Senate bill proposed making the vaccine free to all minors. A House bill proposed free vaccines only for children in need; according to newspaper accounts from the time, discussion of the bill triggered an angry row that forced the speaker to call a cooling off recess. The $30 million Polio Vaccination Assistance Act that President Dwight Eisenhower signed that August was a compromise that essentially let states decide for themselves.

Polio cases fell sharply over the next few years. Then in 1958, as national attention began to flag, cases ticked back up among the unvaccinated. Polio cases clustered in urban areas, largely among poor people of color with limited health care access. States pattern of polio, government epidemiologists noted, had become quite different from that generally seen in the past.

Three years later, the federal government approved an oral polio vaccine, developed by Albert Sabins laboratory in Cincinnati, containing weakened, not inactivated, virus. By the end of that year, polio infections were down 90 percent from 1955 levels. In 1979, the country recorded its last community-transmitted case.

Today, decades into a global vaccination campaign, polio persists in just three countries. The battle against the disease has been a century-long march. And it has required a sustained commitment to continuing polio vaccination a commitment now compromised as global polio vaccination efforts have been put on hold to slow the coronaviruss spread.

Granted, there are countless differences between the fight against the coronavirus and the long-ago fight against polio. The global capacity for vaccine research and development is far greater than it was in the 1950s. Drug approval and manufacturing safety protocols have been refined since then, too. Already, just months into the current pandemic, there are far more vaccines in development against the coronavirus than there ever were against polio.

But the regulatory thresholds weve spent decades putting into place are being swept aside to speed that development. And some of the coronavirus vaccines now in lightning fast development by new biotech firms, university labs and familiar pharmaceutical giants are as novel as the first polio vaccine was in 1955.

If one does prove safe and effective, we will face the same challenges we faced then of making enough to protect the population, without causing harm, and distributing it without exacerbating existing inequities in our society.

Elena Conis is a historian and a professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where Michael McCoyd is a doctoral candidate in computer science and Jessie A. Moravek is a doctoral student in environmental science, policy and management.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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What to Expect When a Coronavirus Vaccine Finally Arrives - The New York Times

Last week, President Trump stood in the Rose Garden and told the assembled press corps that hundreds of millions of doses of a coronavirus vaccine would be available by the end of 2020, just seven months away.

Its called Operation Warp Speed. That means big, and it means fast, Trump said.

Itd be a scientific miracle if a vaccine is ready by then. Developers face two mountainous hurdles on the path toward a coronavirus vaccine: proving that what theyre making is safe and effective, and producing it in vast quantities. Hurdling even that first barrier within a year would be an astonishing achievement. The fastest vaccine ever developed, approved for the mumps in 1967, still took four years.

Nearly everything about the COVID-19 pandemic is breaking the charts, and if there was ever a time for pharmaceutical companies to deliver on their promises, itd be now. Some vaccine development records have already been shattered: it only took 65 days from the time the coronavirus genome was posted online for the pharmaceutical company Moderna to inject the first clinical trial volunteer with an experimental vaccine. Now, more than 100 groups all over the world say theyre working on a coronavirus vaccine.

There are countless points in the vaccine development process where candidates could stall, fail, or fade away. One vaccine that looks safe in a small group of people might show side effects when its tested in a larger study. Another could only protect half of the people who get it from COVID-19 or offer a small amount of protection, but not enough to make a difference in the pandemic. A vaccine could work well enough, but be hard to manufacture quickly and in large quantities.

While there are scores of vaccine candidates in development, there are only a few ways for companies to make a vaccine. Each strategy has its own set of advantages or disadvantages, and keeping those in mind is one way to evaluate any bits of exciting or discouraging vaccine news.

The Verge talked to University of Colorado immunologists Rosemary Rochford and Ross Kedl to break down the likelihood that each vaccine strategy would make it over the finish line.

But before we jump into the types of vaccines, lets start with the basics:

Vaccines work by tricking your immune system into thinking that its being attacked by a virus. Your immune system then churns out antibodies that are honed to that virus. That way, if youre exposed to that virus in the future, your body can quickly squash it out before it makes you sick.

Triggering that immune response takes two main components: a bit of the virus so the body knows what its looking for and some kind of irritant to stir the immune system into action against that viral bit.

If I just put purified protein under your skin, nothing would happen. You have to get the immune system kicked up, Rochford says.

The different approaches to vaccine development package those two components in different ways. Rochford says its good to see developers working on all of the possible options. I think we need all hands on deck. Any way we can go at this. We have to throw everything at it and see what sticks, she says.

Heres a rundown of the four basic approaches scientists are throwing at the virus:

Gene-based vaccines are the much-hyped underdog in the race to create a coronavirus vaccine. Most of the vaccine candidates that grabbed headlines or sent the stock market soaring are gene-based. Moderna, which was the fastest to start testing its vaccine in volunteers in the US, has a gene-based vaccine. So does Pfizer, which is also in clinical trials.

Instead of directly delivering bits of virus to the immune system for target practice, gene-based vaccines give the body tools to make them on its own. The vaccines are made up of pieces of genetic material, either mRNA or DNA, that encode the instructions for making the protein. The mRNA or DNA then enters cells, which read the instructions and churn out copies of the protein for the immune system to rally against.

Rather than producing the vaccine outside the patient, you make the patient make their own vaccine, Kedl says.

Most of the coronavirus vaccines that use this method are introducing the gene that encodes a bit of protein on the outside of the virus called the spike protein. The virus depends on the spike protein to break into cells and replicate. If the immune system is trained to recognize and block that protein, the virus cant attack cells and continue to spread.

Pros: These types of vaccines are relatively easy for companies to make once they know the genetic sequence theyre targeting. Thats why Moderna was able to get a vaccine ready and start testing it in people so quickly. Theyre also easy to manufacture: if they work, companies could quickly generate millions of doses. From a manufacturing standpoint, if you could shift everything to a nucleotide system, that would be brilliant, Kedl says.

Cons: But despite their simplicity and decades of work, gene-based viruses are still largely experimental, at least for people. Theres never been a gene-based vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration. If a gene-based coronavirus vaccine makes it over the finish line, it would be the first of its kind.

mRNA and DNA vaccines sometimes work well in animals like mice, but they have previously sputtered out when theyre introduced to humans, Kedl says. He says it may be because these vaccines arent good enough at spurring the immune system to create antibodies.

Inactivated virus vaccines are the kind that you may have learned about in high school biology class. Scientists can take a virus and kill it with heat or radiation rendering it harmless, but still recognizable by the immune system. A handful of Chinese companies are developing coronavirus vaccines using this method. One company, Sinovac, showed that its vaccine could protect monkeys from COVID-19. Human trials are ongoing.

Pros: These types of vaccines have been around for decades, and scientists understand them well. Theyre the type of vaccine that Jonas Salk created to fight polio. This is sort of a bread and butter thing to do, Rochford says.

Because these vaccines contain the whole (but non-replicating) virus, theyre good irritants for the immune system. Its got bacterial cell walls and all sorts of viral capsules and proteins and things that stimulate immunity very robustly, Kedl says.

Cons: Unlike gene-based vaccines, though, inactivated virus vaccines are hard to make. Manufacturers have experience with them, but they have to grow and then zap massive amounts of virus. Its a slow process. Its really hard to scale up and create enough of that, Rochford says. The immunity generated by these types of vaccines also tends to fade, and people may need booster shots.

Whole virus vaccines are also more likely to come with side effects, like mild fevers or muscle soreness. But Kedl thinks that people will take some soreness if it means theyll be immune to COVID-19. Global tolerance to injection reactions is probably pretty high, he says.

A whole, live vaccine is one of the best ways to create long-lasting immunity. Thats the strategy used to make vaccines for the measles and the chickenpox. Theyre made from live but heavily weakened versions of the viruses. The viruses are so weak that they dont make you sick, but they still make your body think its infected and set off the immune system.

It takes a long time to alter a virus so that it becomes weak and safe enough to be used as a vaccine, though. To speed things up, vaccine developers arent even attempting to do that with the entire coronavirus. Instead, some teams are inserting sections of the coronavirus gene into weakened, live versions of other viruses.

These viruses, called adenoviruses, usually cause symptoms like diarrhea or pink eye. Scientists have already broken them down to a weakened state so that theyre harmless. The University of Oxford, which is promising vaccines by September, has built its candidate using an adenovirus.

These vaccines work a bit like the gene-based vaccines: the engineered adenovirus dumps a piece of genetic material from the coronavirus, usually the piece that encodes the spike protein, into cells. Then, the cells create copies of the protein. In this case, though, the adenovirus is in charge of activating the immune system which, because its a live virus, it does very well.

Pros: Because this vaccine is based on a weakened, but living, virus, the immune system mounts a strong response against it. When a live, attenuated, vaccine works, they tend to give you longer immunity and a more robust and more durable immunity, Kedl says. With these vaccines, one shot may be enough you wouldnt need a booster.

Cons: Even though we regularly use live virus vaccines, the adenovirus platforms are still experimental. Theyve never been used for infectious diseases. Theres also a concern, Rochford says, that some people may be immune to the adenovirus thats shepherding the coronavirus gene into the body. Adenoviruses circulate through the human population, she says. Even though research groups are using adenoviruses that are relatively uncommon, some people may have seen them before so the vaccine wouldnt work for them.

Protein subunit vaccines directly deliver the specific bit of the virus scientists want people to develop antibodies against (rather than the gene for the protein). For the coronavirus, in most cases, thats the spike protein. These vaccines contain copies of the spike protein and a bit of something to stimulate the immune system.

The HPV vaccine uses this method, and its the approach many scientists are taking in their efforts to create a universal flu vaccine.

Pros: Scientists are familiar with this approach, and its worked well for other types of diseases. We very much know exactly what we have to be going after, Kedl says. Because the vaccine only contains a piece of the virus, its also less likely to trigger side effects.

Cons: Because these vaccines only use a piece of a virus, they sometimes arent able to push the body to generate a strong enough immune response, even with a good irritant built in. People often need multiple shots to build up enough immunity to the disease. Thats why, for example, most people get multiple doses of the HPV vaccine. During a pandemic, creating enough vaccines to give each person one shot is already a challenge.

Building the protein is also a challenge, Rochford says. Developers have to make sure that the version of the spike protein they build has the same properties as the one thats naturally on the virus. Batching them up to scale is very challenging. Its not impossible, but its a challenge, she says.

Theres a long history in vaccinology of trying multiple approaches to the same end goal, Rochford says. Its particularly important for efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine: no one knows which strategy or which vaccine candidate will work best.

Winnowing down the slate of candidates takes time. Companies are starting the laborious process of testing vaccines in increasingly larger groups of people, and theyll have to wait to see if someone actually develops immunity to a disease after theyre given a trial vaccine. You have to wait around, Kedl says. You cant speed that up. They also have to watch for any safety concerns, either short-term side effects or problems that crop up over time.

Testing dozens of options simultaneously, though, ups the likelihood that a few will be successful. Well probably need more than one to work. A single company with a single, effective vaccine wont be able to make enough to meet the demand of the entire world.

We have to spray it with whatever weve got and hope for the best, Rochford says. Hopefully, that best comes sooner rather than later.

Originally posted here:

Unproven strategies lead the race for a COVID-19 vaccine - The Verge

People wait in line to get food distributed by the National Guard in Chelsea, Mass., on April 16. Harvard researchers found areas with more poverty, people of color and crowded housing had higher mortality rates for the coronavirus. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

People wait in line to get food distributed by the National Guard in Chelsea, Mass., on April 16. Harvard researchers found areas with more poverty, people of color and crowded housing had higher mortality rates for the coronavirus.

Much is still unknown about the coronavirus, including a full picture of perhaps its most important impact: who it has killed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that "current data suggest a disproportionate burden of illness and death among racial and ethnic minority groups." The death toll is also incomplete, because not everyone who dies of COVID-19 is counted under that cause of death, among other reasons.

Racial, ethnic and socioeconomic data about people who have died of COVID-19 are not all readily available either. So researchers at Harvard instead looked at the cities, towns and ZIP codes of people who have died of all causes. They compared the number of people who have died against what would be expected in a normal year, or "excess deaths."

What they found is "inequality on top of inequality," says Jarvis Chen, a social epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The team of researchers looked specifically at Massachusetts. Areas with "widespread economic segregation and heavy concentrations of poverty, people of color, and crowded housing" had higher mortality rates compared with everywhere else from the beginning of the year through April 15, they found.

"These are communities in which people may be working 'essential jobs,' where they're unable to practice physical distancing," Chen tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.

"These are communities where people are living in crowded conditions so that if one person in a household gets infected, it's very difficult for them to isolate and protect the other people in their households," he explains. "These are also communities in which people may not be getting access to testing or to care. And so that increases their risk of dying if they do get infected."

Chen and his colleagues say the findings help governments and support groups target their efforts to stem the virus's spread over the next year.

"We're probably going to see more waves as we go through this next year. And so knowing what we did and what we did wrong the first time around will help us understand better how to direct the resources," Chen says.

"So, for example, creating resources for people in communities to be able to isolate. So housing or temporary housing for people who test positive so that they can protect their families is really important," he says. "Knowing where to direct PPE as it becomes more available so that not just the essential workers in hospitals, but also essential workers in things like public transportation or grocery store workers, those populations can get the PPE that they need. And also directing testing to communities who need it the most. Those things could be really important."

Listen to the full interview at the audio link above.

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Harvard Researchers Find 'Inequality On Top Of Inequality' In COVID-19 Deaths - NPR

South Korean soldiers wearing protective masks sit at a temperature screening point at Incheon International Airport, South Korea, on March 9. SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

South Korean soldiers wearing protective masks sit at a temperature screening point at Incheon International Airport, South Korea, on March 9.

South Korea's Center for Disease Control has reassuring news about people with COVID-19 who test positive for the coronavirus weeks after their symptoms have resolved.

Health officials there studied 285 patients who tested negative for the virus after recovering, but weeks later tested positive again. The question in this and similar situations is whether a positive test in this circumstance means that these people can still spread the virus.

To find out, the scientists followed up with nearly 800 of those people's personal contacts, such as family members. They found no evidence that they had contracted the virus from the people who had a fresh positive result. The scientists also tried to grow the virus in secretions from these patients. They could not.

As a result of these findings, published online Tuesday, the South Korean CDC no longer recommends that people in this situation be isolated. Their contacts do not need to be quarantined, though health officials do plan to continue investigating cases of people who have tested positive again after having had a negative test.

The study is shedding some light on the natural course of COVID-19. It's providing hints, but not definitive information, about how to handle patients who continue to test positive for the coronavirus long after their symptoms have resolved.

The persistence of the virus in some people "seems to be a normal thing that happens," says Dr. Aaron Hess, an anesthesiologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

He and his colleagues encountered this conundrum as well. They were testing patients who had recovered from a bout of COVID-19 and had offered to donate blood plasma to use as part of an experimental treatment. The researchers tested a group of patients at least two weeks after they had recovered, just to make sure they weren't still producing virus. Eleven patients, representing 13% of their sample, still tested positive, "and this was a little surprising," he said.

The test, known as PCR (for polymerase chain reaction), looks for genetic material from the virus. Both in the case of the Wisconsin study and that from South Korea, the level of genetic material from the virus in the sample was very low, Hess notes. That's consistent with the idea that it's simply biological residue, not signs of an active viral infection.

"Having a positive PCR test after you've recovered in no way implies that you're infectious," Hess says. But it's still not clear when a positive result is worry-free.

It's also not clear whether health officials in the United States will change their procedures based on the results from South Korea. "Unfortunately, what we don't have here in the U.S. is the kind of widespread testing and systematic contact tracing that might make you more confident in saying that you would be comfortable not re-isolating people who are positive," Hess says.

Scientists are trying to gather enough data about this to have more definitive answers about when it's safe for a recovered patient to go back to work or to return to a nursing home, even if the PCR test shows signs of the coronavirus.

"I think it's situations like this that are going to teach us a lot about all of the possibilities that surround the clinical infection of COVID-19," says Dr. Brian Conway, medical director of the Vancouver (Canada) Infectious Diseases Center.

Conway has been studying a related mystery. He has a patient who apparently recovered, only to fall ill again not just once, but twice.

After her initial bout with COVID-19, she was well for 10 days "and then developed very significant symptoms for another week," Conway says. She recovered again, but 10 days later she got the same symptoms. Again, she recovered, "and then finally has been better over the past week or 10 days."

The woman lives with four other people who were sick with COVID-19. "An interesting possibility that needs to be considered is that she passed the infection on to them. They became sick. She became well, then they passed the infection back to her," he says.

Conway is trying to figure out whether she actually caught the disease three times or whether she's had one continuous but highly variable infection. He is planning to test blood samples from her taken during the course of the disease to see what he can learn.

The case is apparently rare. There are only a few reported in the scientific literature, including one from Italy and a report from China. So most people who have recovered from COVID-19 shouldn't fret. But unusual cases often shed light on the biology of a disease.

One pressing question is whether COVID-19 will end up being more like coronaviruses that can cause colds. For that disease, immunity fades quickly and reinfection can follow. Alternatively, it could be more like the measles, which usually causes a single bout of disease followed by a lifetime of immunity.

There may also be clues that apply to vaccine development, Conway suggests. "There may be different kinds of antibodies that provide different kinds of protection," he says. That could be valuable information for vaccine developers.

Conway says as of now, his patient and her family are all better. "Let's see what we can learn from this, to help us understand not only how the virus behaves, but how to counsel similar family units going forward."

You can contact NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris at rharris@npr.org.

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South Korean Study Shows No Evidence Recovered COVID-19 Patients Can Infect Others - NPR

A worker wipes down surfaces on a New York City subway car to disinfect seats during the coronavirus outbreak. The CDC is clarifying its guidance on touching surfaces after a change to its website triggered news reports. Andrew Kelly/Reuters hide caption

A worker wipes down surfaces on a New York City subway car to disinfect seats during the coronavirus outbreak. The CDC is clarifying its guidance on touching surfaces after a change to its website triggered news reports.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is clarifying its guidance to prevent the coronavirus from spreading, hoping to clear up confusion over whether a person can contract the disease by touching surfaces that have the virus on them. The agency said "usability improvements," including a headline change on its webpage about preventing viral infection, seemed to trigger news stories saying its guidelines have changed.

"Our transmission language has not changed," CDC spokesman Benjamin Haynes told NPR.

The main source of the coronavirus's spread, the agency said, is through respiratory droplets from an infected person who coughs, sneezes or talks in close proximity to someone else.

"COVID-19 spreads mainly through close contact from person to person," Haynes said. "While it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose or possibly their eyes, this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads."

A number of news outlets, including The Washington Post, noted this week that the CDC had reorganized information on its page titled "How COVID-19 Spreads."

Last month, the page listed "Spread from contact with contaminated surfaces and objects" under its own subheading, just below a similar subhead on "Person-to-person spread."

The page now lists surfaces and objects in a new subsection titled "The virus does not spread easily in other ways."

On both the current version of the page and the older one, the CDC says of surface transmission, "This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about this virus."

The CDC said people should continue to clean and disinfect dirty surfaces that could be harboring the virus.

"Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to persons from surfaces contaminated with the virus has not been documented," the agency says on its page about disinfecting surfaces. But it adds, "Current evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 may remain viable for hours to days on surfaces made from a variety of materials."

Continued here:

CDC Advice On Surface Spread Of COVID-19 'Has Not Changed,' Agency Says - NPR

A researcher works on the diagnosis of suspected COVID-19 cases in Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, on March 26, 2020. Douglas Magno /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A researcher works on the diagnosis of suspected COVID-19 cases in Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, on March 26, 2020.

These days, it seems any morsel of good news about a coronavirus vaccine sends hopes and markets soaring.

The reality is, developing and producing a vaccine is an incredibly complicated process one that is heavily reliant on global cooperation, says Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Yadav says cooperation is necessary for a number of reasons. For one, "just protecting U.S. population won't be sufficient for us to resume global travel and trade," he says.

Then there's the matter of simple logistics. Assuming U.S. researchers are able to discover a vaccine, the spare parts, components and ingredients that would go into manufacturing it all come from a global supply chain.

Cooperation is also a way for the U.S. to hedge its own risks "in terms of who has the most efficacious vaccine first," says Yadav. "It may well be that it's not a U.S. vaccine, so global cooperation will help on all of those three fronts."

Yadav, who has been working around the world to improve health care supply chains, spoke with All Things Considered on Wednesday about the race for a vaccine. Here are highlights from the conversation.

How is the U.S. doing on the vaccine effort?

So, first thing, I think we have some of the top scientists for vaccine development and for vaccine manufacturing and looking at all of these novel platforms here in the U.S. ... Somewhere along the way we backtracked on global collaboration, which may hurt us in some ways. And then I think there's also efforts being put in place one notable one is a public/private partnership that Health and Human Services announced a week or so ago to make new technology for syringes and vaccine containers, which will relieve the global supply chain of some of the pressures in glass vials.

So some things are moving well, especially when it comes to things that manufacturing scientists and clinical scientists control. Things which are about making sure that our global diplomacy is working, things that are about making sure that we work with this in a multilateral coordinated manner, those are where I think we see some deficiencies.

Is it possible that multiple countries who are working on this will announce successful vaccines around the same time?

Yeah, so I think what constitutes successful vaccine is somewhat unclear and fuzzy, right? I mean, we may not have a successful vaccine in the sense that it is ready to be used at widespread population level for prevention in a country, but we may have earlier vaccines which are more of our smaller population groups, controlling outbreaks or applicable only in specific age groups, and so on. So I think what is most likely going to happen is that we would have a number of vaccines with slightly varying efficacy profile characteristics around the same time, and then it will be a question of which vaccine does the global convergence circle around or do countries and health systems start paying attention to one or two as compared to just everyone scrambling to get the one vaccine. And that will determine whether the manufacturing capacity can be more distributed or will it be all towards one vaccine.

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Why The Race For A Coronavirus Vaccine Will Depend On Global Cooperation - NPR

Even as some states move to ease the lockdowns that have cost tens of millions of jobs and tipped the economy into recession, a safe return to normal life without a widely available Covid-19 vaccine is looking more difficult.

In South Korea and Germany, countries that were among the most effective at controlling initial outbreaks of Covid-19, rollbacks of lockdowns have been stymied by new flare-ups. As long as the virus lurks in peoples throats and on elevator panels, doorknobs, and subway-car poles, it is hard to see how...

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How Close Are We to a Coronavirus Vaccine? Inside the Race to Stop Covid-19. - Barron's

Experts are hopeful that a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus will become available sooner rather than later.

Will there be a coronavirus vaccine? Will US company Moderna lead the way? Experts are hopeful that we'll see a coronavirus vaccine sooner rather than later, but there's no cure yet for the virus that causes COVID-19 and vaccines often take years to develop, approve, make anddistribute globally. There is heightened activity, however, and a strong desire in the medical community to fast-track the process.

In fact, as states and countries slowlyemerge from lockdown measuresmeant tocurb the spreadof the coronavirus,doctors and scientists around the globeare racing to develop vaccines tobring an end to the pandemic, which has already claimedover 320,000 lives worldwide. Even though hardly four months have passed since acluster of unusual pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Chinafirst alerted the world to a new disease now known as COVID-19,at least half a dozen vaccine development projectsarealready reporting encouraging progress, with many more in development.

Keep track of the coronavirus pandemic.

One more note before we get underway. This article is updated frequently as new information comes to light, and is intended to be a general overview, not a source of medical advice. If you're seeking more information about coronavirus testing,here's how to find a testing sitenear you. Here'show to know if you qualify for a testandwhy there aren't any coronavirus at-home test kitsyet.

Read more:What it will take for life to return to normal after lockdown ends

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Moderna, a Massachusetts-based biotech company, is making headlines for its coronavirus vaccine development -- both positive and negative. On Monday, reports that Moderna's first trials showed promise for immunity caused Moderna's stock to soar. On Tuesday, scientists cast doubt on the company's data, causing the same stocks to falter.

Moderna is the beneficiary of the USFood and Drug Administration's program to fast-track a vaccine. Thefast-track processexpedites approval by allowing select labs to submit their review process by phases, rather than submitting all sections of the application at once, which is the usual way. The company ranPhase 1 clinical trialsand reportedpreliminary data that it says supports the moveto a larger Phase 2 trial. You can learn more about its vaccine candidate,mRNA-1273, here.

Another vaccine is under development atOxford Universityin the UK. Scientists there say their vaccinecould be ready by the fall of 2020. Oxford is working with pharmaceutical giantAstraZeneca, which beganPhase 1 human trials in April.

Scientists say in a paper thatresults from Oxford's trialson mice and rhesus monkeys aremixed, however, speculating that humans who eventually take the vaccinemight still be able to spreadthe virus. You can read more about this effort, calledChAdOx1 nCoV-19, at AstraZeneca's website.

We won't know for a long time, butDr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, suggests that it might takeseveral different vaccinesmade and distributed by different labs in order to effectively eradicate COVID-19 from the planet. Fauci co-authored apaper about vaccines published May 11 in the journal Science.

A vaccine is a medical treatment that protects you against a disease like the coronavirus or smallpox. For a deeper dive into how vaccines work, check outthis in-depth coronavirus treatment explainer by CNET's Science Editor Jackson Ryan. The short and sweet of it is that a vaccine tricks your body into thinking it's already had the disease, so your body's natural defense -- the immune system --builds antibodies against it. Then, if you were to become infected, your body would call upon the antibodies to fight the virus before you feel sick.

Vaccines typically take about10 to 15 years to develop. That's in part because any new medical treatment needs to be thoroughly tested for safety before it can be distributed to millions or billions of people. Themumps vaccine took four years, which is widely considered the fastest vaccine approval in the history of infectious disease.

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Most health experts predict that the virus won't stop spreading until 60% to 70% of the world'spopulation is immune, and they say the only way to reach that level of immunity without amonumental death toll is through vaccines. Such is the opinion ofCarl T. Bergstrom, a biology professor at the University of Washington andNatalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, in a joint editorialpublished in the New York Times.

There are currentlyover 100 vaccines reportedly under development, withseven reportedly already in clinical trialsearlier this month. That means there aremore scientists working harder and faster on finding a vaccinethan ever before in the history of pandemics. But even if one or more of the vaccines now in the works turns out to be effective,the FDA approval processtypically takes a year or longer.

This April, the White House began organizing "Operation Warp Speed," according to Bloomberg, a sort of coronavirus vaccine task force that has identified14 vaccine projectsthat it will focus on fast-tracking. The "Warp Speed" project itself,which the White House acknowledged during an April press briefing, has a stated goal of readying300 million doses of vaccineto be available by January 2021. That's a bit faster than the12- to 18-month estimated timeline proposed by Fauci, the NIAID director.

As of this writing there areover 100 vaccines under development in countries around the world, including the US, UK, Germany, Japan and China. Twelve are either already in clinical trials or starting in the next few months.

Scientists from around the world are working toward developing a vaccine. So far 12 projects have either started or will soon start clinical trials.

Statistically, only about 6% of vaccine candidates ever make it through to market, according to a Reuters special report, and not just because they don't work. There's a whole litany of problems that could cancel even a promising candidate.

Take, for example, what happened when scientists tried to develop a vaccine for SARS --it backfired and actually made people more susceptible to the disease. The same thing happened with avaccine for Dengue fever. To make matters worse, coronaviruses are a large class of viruses andso far there are no vaccines for any of them.

However, this particular coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has some unique traits that may help researchers working on a vaccine. For example, some viruses, like the flu, mutate quickly and often, which is why there's a new flu vaccine every year. Early evidencesuggests that the coronavirus doesn't appear to do that. Althoughsome researchers have hypothesized that a more contagious strain has recently developed, others aren't so sure. Either way, it's thought that the virus has not yet mutated significantly enough to disrupt vaccine development, nor is it expected to, though it's too soon to say for certain, and there are still many unknowns about the virus' behavior.

Rules and regulations vary by country, but, generally speaking, most industrialized nations have similar protocols for approving a vaccine. The following path is how vaccines are approved in the US under the FDA:

Until there's a vaccine, expect safety precautions like face masks and social distancing to be a part of everyday life.

The longer we go without a vaccine, the more likely focus will shift toward treatments, such as theexperimental antiviral drug remdesivir, which has reportedly shown promising results. With effective therapeutic treatments, many viruses that used to be fatal are no longer death sentences. Patients with HIV, for example, now can expect to enjoythe same life expectancyas non-HIV-positive individuals, thanks to tremendous advances in treatment.

Without a coronavirus vaccine, the road back to normal may be harder and longer, but not necessarily impossible.Coronavirus testing, includingantibody testing, andcontact-tracingefforts would probably need to intensify.

Lockdown measures are alreadylifting slowly, althoughdepending on people's behavioral practicesand a potential resurgence of infections, cities and states may bring back certain quarantine measures, including requiringface masksandsocial distancing. Eventually, the global population may reach the 60% to 70% rate required forherd immunityto protect those who aren't immune.

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A medical scientist runs a clinical test at the UW Medicine immunology lab in Seattle to look for antibodies against a virus strain that causes COVID-19. (Karen Ducey/Getty Images)

Most Americans are optimistic that medical advances to treat or prevent the coronavirus are on the horizon, and around seven-in-ten say they would get a vaccine for COVID-19 if it were available, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted April 29-May 5.

Americans expectations for the year ahead include an effective treatment or cure for COVID-19, as well as a vaccine to prevent the disease: 83% and 73% of U.S. adults, respectively, say these developments will definitely or probably occur. At the same time, 83% of adults expect another coronavirus outbreak within the year, and 69% expect the focus on the coronavirus to delay progress on other disease treatments.

This analysis about Americans attitudes toward a potential coronavirus vaccine, clinical trials and experimental treatments is based on a survey of 10,957 U.S. adults conducted from April 29 to May 5, 2020. Everyone who took part is a member of Pew Research Centers American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATPs methodology.

Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

Around seven-in-ten adults (72%) say they would definitely (42%) or probably (30%) get a coronavirus vaccine if one were available, while about a quarter (27%) say they would not. The survey comes amid concerns that activists and others who are hesitant to get vaccinated for other diseases might not get inoculated against the coronavirus.

Majorities across demographic groups say they would get vaccinated for the coronavirus, but there are some differences by race and ethnicity, partisanship, religion and other factors.

Black Americans are less likely than white and Hispanic Americans to say they would get a vaccine. A little over half of black adults (54%) say they would, while 44% say they would not. By comparison, 74% of both Hispanic and white adults say they would get a vaccine if one were available. (In a Pew Research Center survey in 2019, black adults were also less inclined than white adults to see strong preventive benefits of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.)

Republicans and white evangelical Protestants are also somewhat less inclined to get a coronavirus vaccine. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 65% say they would definitely or probably do so, while 34% say they would not. Among white evangelical Protestants, 62% say they would get a coronavirus vaccine and 37% say they would not.

The path to new treatments can be a long and uncertain one. The Food and Drug Administration requires new treatments to go through a process of test runs known as clinical trials to establish that they are safe and effective in treating people with a specific disease.

In the new survey, about two-thirds of U.S. adults (64%) say the process of clinical trials is very important, even if it will lengthen the time it takes to develop new treatments. Around three-in-ten (31%) say the clinical trial process is somewhat important, and just 5% say it is not too or not at all important.

Democrats place more importance on clinical trials than Republicans. Around three-quarters of Democrats and Democratic leaners (74%) call this process very important, compared with 54% of Republicans and GOP leaners.

The new survey also asked Americans to consider the overall risks and benefits of access to experimental treatments before the completion of clinical trials. (This process is already happening for some patients with the coronavirus.) Around six-in-ten Americans (59%) say the benefits of allowing more people to access experimental drugs outweigh the risks, while 40% say the risks outweigh the benefits.

Republicans are more likely to say the benefits outweigh the risks (69% vs. 29%), but Democrats are about evenly divided (50% vs. 48%). Black adults are more likely than white and Hispanic adults to say the risks of experimental treatments outweigh the benefits: A 57% majority of black adults say this.

Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

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Most Americans expect a COVID-19 vaccine within a year; 72% say they would get vaccinated - Pew Research Center

The UN health agency's annual oversight convention, held for the first time ever by teleconference from Geneva on 18-19 May, was focused intensely on defeating the novel coronavirus that has infected more than4.7 millionpeople worldwide, caused more than 316,100 deaths and thrown the futures of even the most robust economies into jeopardy.

The event was punctuated by the assertion from the White House that WHO did not act quickly enough in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak to contain its spread. In a letter sent via Twitter on Monday to the WHO chief, US President Donald Trump set a 30-day deadline for the UN health agency to make significant reforms or risk losing funding.

By the resolution, passed unanimously by the 194 WHO Member States, the Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was called on to rapidly identify and provide options for scaling up the development, manufacture and distribution capacities needed for providing access to COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics, medicines and vaccines.

More broadly, international organizations were called on to work collaboratively to develop, test and scale-up production of safe, effective, quality, affordable diagnostics, therapeutics, medicines and vaccines for the COVID-19 response including in the licensing of patents to facilitate access to them.

In hisclosing remarks, Tedros said WHOs focus remains fighting the pandemic with every tool at its disposal. Our focus is on saving lives, he said.

He pledgedto initiate an evaluation at the earliest appropriate moment, welcoming any effort to strengthen global health security - and the agency itself. As always, WHO remains fully committed to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement, he assured. We want accountability more than anyone.

Neither he nor the Secretary-General responded on Tuesday directly to Mr. Trumps letter, with the UN Spokesperson referring journalists in New York toopening remarkson the work and value of the WHO amidst the pandemic,Antnio Guterresmade to the Assembly on Monday.

Dr. Tedros also thanked the Independent Oversight Advisory Committee for its continuous review of WHOs work in health emergencies, and in particular, its report on the COVID-19 response,published on Monday.Checking and learning our lessons is in WHOs DNA, Tedros said,noting that he was heartened at how countries had shared best practices during the Assembly.

For its part, WHO will continue to provide strategic leadership to coordinate the global response, he said, offering epidemiological information and analysis and keeping countries updated on ways to keep safe.

In addition, WHO will continue to ship diagnostics, personal protective equipment and medical supplies across the globe, convene experts to deliver technical advice based on the best science, and drive research to develop evidence about vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.

COVID-19 has robbed us of people we love, he said, taken livelihoods and shaken the worlds very foundations. It has also offered a reminder of the opportunity to forge a common future.WHO will continueto work - day and night - to support the most vulnerable countries and populations. Well never, ever give up, Tedros pledged. Let our shared humanity be the antidote to our shared threat.

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WHO countries agree 'equitable and timely access' to coronavirus vaccine, 'comprehensive evaluation' of response - UN News