The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be a challenge for years, even with a vaccine, according to pharmaceutical and public health experts.
Although a vaccine will provide a measure of protection to societies around the world, the virus is likely to inflate and fight off from time to time, as do the flu and other pathogens.
“We know that this virus will not go away any time soon. It has established itself and will continue to do so wherever it can, “said Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist for the World Health Organization, at the” How Covid-19 Is Reshaping the Global Health care Ecosystem ” event hosted by Bloomberg Prognosis. “We know we have to live with this.”
Mankind’s record against viruses is poor. Only one virus has been completely eradicated from human existence – smallpox. The rest are managed, with brush fire stomped out as they ignite.
“I think what is realistic to expect is that with a combination of drugs and vaccines we can come to a stable place where the pandemic is manageable,” said Vas Narasimhan, Novartis’ Chief Executive Officer. He called the actual elimination of the virus “unlikely.”
There are 29 different vaccines in human trials around the world, according to a World Health Organization report released Thursday. More than 20 million people have been confirmed worldwide, with at least 751,000 killed by the virus.
While the impetus for rapid vaccination testing has potentially cut back years from the time before one will be ready, a first round of inoculations will likely only go to health workers and high-risk populations, with the general public having to wait until sometime next year years to get a shot.
“The longer you wait, the more knowledge you will have about the vaccine,” Narasimhan said. “With reasonable confidence, we could have a safe and effective vaccine that can be used widely before the end of next year.”
Read more: For most Americans, a vaccine will wait until next year
Two of the most advanced fax machines are developed by Pfizer Inc. and by the University of Oxford, which works with drug maker AstraZeneca Plc. But scientists working on the trials said it was important to gather a robust set of data instead of rushing to look at early results.
The Oxford vaccine is tested in the United Kingdom in a trial of 10,000 individuals who signed up most of their participants. It is set to run as long as a year collects results, potentially with an earlier outlook.
“We do not yet have clarity on the timelines for those trials,” said Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford professor who led the development of the vaccine. She warned against early testing in the trial – a process called unblinding – that could damage the results. “We can no longer view the data,” she said.
Pfizer said it would also not run in an early radiance.
“We will not blind the study too soon,” said Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer’s head of fax research and development. “If we are successful, yes, then we can declare success early.”
With vaccines being given to healthy people, longer sets of data are essential to determine how safe they are in the long run and how long protection lasts.
“We will not know until we follow patients in clinical trials, particularly the vaccine studies, for six months to a year,” said Narasimhan of Novartis.
Continuous risk
Pandemics such as Covid-19 are rare, and may occur rarely once in 200 years, said Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College London who advised the UK government on its early-stage response. However, more new viruses and outbreaks are likely to emerge as urbanization and deforestation bring people and animals into closer contact.
In recent decades, there has been an “increasing number of viruses and bacterial infections in humans,” said Devi Sridhar, President of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh. “As long as we have close contact between animals and humans, we will continue with transitional events. And we see that through urbanization, deforestation, having wet markets. ”
There are steps that can be taken to reduce the risks of future pandemics, especially to address the reduction of human interaction with wildlife, Ferguson said. One of the major risks is game killing, along with sales in markets in Asia and Africa.
“Honestly, stop those we could reduce the risk, but not completely,” he said.
While hundreds of vaccines are in development that can slow or even stop the coronavirus, this is only one step on the path to protection. Covid has been devastated in rich and poor countries, suggesting that public health systems have been found, even in countries with strong healthcare systems, according to Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization.
The WHO has been heavily criticized by US President Donald Trump, who has said the group has failed to prevent the outbreak and is too politically close to China. The US currently has one of the least sustained outbreaks in the world.
“We have not invested in responses to public health,” Swaminathan said. “The countries that responded really well did so because the political leadership took it seriously, considered early on what was happening and relied on scientific expertise.”
– With the help of Suzi Ring, Theo Golden, John Fraher, and Stephanie Baker
.
