Dr Seth Berkley is considered one of the most influential people in the world, a ‘visionary’ and absolutely at the forefront in combating, controlling and managing global health threats, from influenza to HIV.
Well, even though he has been doing this for decades with such prominence that he is on the Newsweek almost 20 years ago, the very current COVID-19 crisis is causing some new problems.
In his nine years as head of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, he has worked on the idea that everyone, especially in developing countries, should have access to the same vaccines and immunizations instead of just the richest countries and populations. This is more real than ever for COVID-19.
He tells Newsweek in an exclusive interview that there is still a long way to go in the fight against COVID-19 and make sure that it is not just a solved problem in the richest nations.
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“We have no idea if any of these faxes will work, so it is impossible to give a timeline,” Drs. Berkley Newsweek when asked how far the world was from finding a vaccine.
“From a planning standpoint, we now have six candidates on trial. That tells you that we will start in the third quarter to get effectiveness data, maybe in the fourth quarter, they may all be negative or we may start to get some positive signals, so it it’s important that we start planning for that. “
President Trump recently announced that he had reached an agreement with biotechnology company Moderna to buy 100 million doses of its experimental vaccine for $ 1.5 billion, with Boris Johnson describing the search for a vaccine as “the most urgent shared endeavor”. of our days of life “.
This “shared striving” is close to the heart of Dr. Berkley.
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He says large pharmaceutical companies worldwide need to be well on their way to profit when it comes to a COVID-19 vaccine and chances of success for countries that decide to go it alone in search of a vaccine “are slim”.
Despite all the regulatory testing and licensing work that is still going on, even with successful trials, Berkley urges countries to participate in coordinated efforts. Otherwise, he says, they face the stark reality of being in the back of the queue as and when one becomes available.
He also condemned deliberate partisan attempts for misinformation and much information was needed to verify Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that the country had developed vaccines ready for use.
With more than 750,000 deaths worldwide, and the world economy in turmoil, the stakes could not be higher.
But big challenges are what Dr. Berkley has a lot of experience in.
GAVI
After training as a doctor at Brown and Harvard, spending time as an epidemiologist in Brazil and Uganda, witnessing AIDS development in the 1980s, he took on – at the age of 40 – the task of ensuring that the then ( and even now) undetected AIDS / HIV vaccine could be delivered to all.
Then in 2011 he took control of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, which had the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as founding partners, to continue that work.
The Gates Foundation alone has so far donated $ 4.1 billion to this work, although much of GAVI’s funding comes from nation-states.
But how can anyone realistically ensure that the COVID-19 vaccine is made available to everyone, given that cases of polio are still being fixed in some parts of the world?
GAVI has recently set up its COVAX facility in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Coalition for Epidemiological Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which aims to ensure that every country, especially the poorer, the most honest and fair can access and a COVID-19 vaccine.
The goal is to deliver two billion safe doses of vaccine by the end of 2021, with rich countries pooling their resources alongside agreements with lower-income countries in a bid to find a cure.
The benefit of this approach instead of going it alone, a GAVI spokesman said Newsweek, is that if a country fails in its own agreement, then at least signing up for a more coordinated approach between different countries pooling its resources will mean that each country will have access to a fax if one becomes available.
The plan is to buy vaccines for everyone, delivering doses for an average of 20 percent of each country’s population, concentrating on health care workers and the most vulnerable groups.
Further doses will be made available based on funding, need of land, vulnerability and potential threat.
Dr. However, Berkley acknowledges that not everyone can be vaccinated.
“No vaccine is 100 percent effective, and we are also unable to get vaccines for 100 percent of the population,” he said.
“If a raging pandemic happens in other countries, you can not go back to normal trade, commerce, tourism, travel, all the things that make up the world economy.”
GAVI believes that 20 percent of the population in all countries participating in its scheme will cover vaccinating the most vulnerable people and health care workers, and by doing so suppress the transmission of the disease.
The United Kingdom is among those countries that have decided to forge agreements with companies in a bid to find a vaccine, signing four separate agreements, while Trump has openly talked about an “America first” approach to the vaccine.
Does this not undermine the efforts of GAVI in a collaborative approach, when some of the most powerful states in the world have decided to go it alone in the search for the vaccine?
Dr. Berkley says: “Even for countries that have done their own bilateral deals, historically the chances are that faxes will succeed less than 10 percent. If you made a deal, it might work, then it will not work. If it’s you not at the back of the queue.
“We have suggested for these countries, participate in the facility, if your vaccine works great, if not, then we will give you the insurance to make sure you have access to a product.”
A recent survey found that one in three Americans would not receive a COVID-19 vaccine, with the figure being one in four in the UK
With such skepticism and the spread of false news about faxes, how does GAVI intend to address that to ensure worldwide vaccination?
Dr. Berkley says, “I think we need to take some of those interviews with a grain of salt. We need to take them seriously and work to make sure people are comfortably insured and have the facts.
“I think part of this has also been a reaction to claims that have been made wrong about various interventions and a feeling that this policy could be made and that makes people nervous.”
He hopes people will change their minds once they see faxes that go through regulatory processes, are tested and then used.
“This is a dangerous time that a lot of this game has become quite partisan,” he said.
“We have a lot of misinformation that is intentionally disseminated, such as from people who just do not know any better and I think we need to take it seriously and try to have positive and factual information flowing and try to silence intentional misinformation. . “
The CEO of pharmaceutical company Pfizer has already said he wants to profit from each potential vaccine, an argument that Dr Berkley says he can sympathize with when it comes to smaller companies.
“We have to be honest, there is an enormous amount of public investment in faxes and that has to be taken into account when thinking about how these products are priced and what we need to do,” says Dr. Berkley.
“It’s a social decision that said we want fax companies and pharmaceutical companies to be for-profit entities. In the old days, there were government entities that supplied these products and then the provision was made policy that there efficiency in the private was sector and we make sure this was the mechanism.
“You can then not turn around and say to them, well, we made that decision, but now we think you should become non-for-profit entities.”
When it came to larger pharmaceutical companies, Dr. Berkley said he could see another argument being made.
“I think for large companies that have sufficient balance, there is an argument to be made during a pandemic that we are working for the good of the world and we are doing it around the cost level,” he said.
“I think it’s very difficult for small businesses if this is their product. I think they should probably make a modest profit as part of it.”
Dr. Berkley also praised the role of Bill Gates not only for being GAVI’s single biggest supporter, but also for continuing to support her ongoing vaccination programs for a variety of other diseases, such as measles and polio.
While much of the world is turning to a vaccine, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently announced that the country has given regulatory approval to a locally developed COVID-19 vaccine.
It’s a claim that Dr. Berkley is not so sure about.
“We have no public, published information on the effectiveness or safety of this product,” he said.
“It may be that there is some data we do not know, but in general something very important is that faxes go through a well-oiled and recognized process for evaluation and security and eventual registration.”
“My understanding of the media is that she [Russia] now begin an effectiveness test so that it has not been through an effectiveness test and normally a strict regulatory authority would not be able to approve it.
“If there are any effectiveness data we do not know about, we would like to see them.”
He reiterated his call for countries to put their own interests together and work together.
“In a pandemic situation with a virus spreading as fast as it is spreading, a global view is absolutely critical.”
For someone who has spent his working life responding to global concerns, he hopes the world will come up and take it into account.
