A vaccine is critical to ending the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic and India’s pharmaceutical industry and will play an important role due to its ability to make high-quality vaccines at affordable prices, said Bill Gates, co-founder and co-founder of Microsoft. -president of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in an email interview with HT.
The BMGF’s Fourth Annual Report on Goalkeepers released Tuesday said the social and economic impacts of the pandemic have reinforced inequalities and derailed 20 years of progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals that aim to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and fix climate change by 2030.
The economic damage of Covid-19 is reinforcing inequalities and extreme poverty has increased by 7%. Projections from the International Monetary Fund say that despite the $ 18 trillion economic stimulus spent around the world, the global economy will lose $ 12 trillion or more by the end of 2021, which is the largest loss in world GDP since end of World War II.
Are vaccines against coronavirus disease (Covid-19) likely to provide lasting protection?
It is too early to predict how long the protection will last. At this point, we don’t have enough data on the duration of the antibody and T-cell response to the disease itself, much less to the various candidate vaccines. Many of the ongoing vaccine trials should begin reporting efficacy data in the coming months, which will begin to provide answers to these critical questions. The good news is that there is a large portfolio of vaccines under test, each with a different focus. This provides the best possible chance of developing effective vaccines.
Also read: India will likely play a key role in the manufacture of the Covid-19 vaccine: Bill Gates
What role can Indian pharmaceutical and vaccine producers play in stopping Covid-19?
They can and will play an important role, because they have the ability to make high-quality vaccines at scale at affordable prices. A great example is the Serum Institute of India, which makes more vaccines than any other company in the world. Our foundation and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, recently announced funding for the Serum Institute to help it increase manufacturing capacity so that it can produce up to 100 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine for low- and middle-income countries in 2021. Serum has agreed to price its vaccines at no more than $ 3 per dose. Serum is just one company in a very dynamic industry that can support the Covid-19 response. Prior to Covid-19, our foundation has worked extensively with other innovative Indian companies, including Bharat Biotech and BioE, to support them in developing and supplying safe and effective vaccines for India and the world.
Can Covid-19 End Without a Vaccine? Is herd immunity possible without a vaccine?
When people refer to a herd immunity strategy to control the pandemic, there are two issues they are not addressing. The first is that letting people get sick until most are immune and the disease no longer spreads easily will result in millions of deaths. The second is that herd immunity is always temporary, because children are born without immunity, and eventually there will be enough susceptible people for the disease to easily spread again. For both reasons, a vaccine is essential. It will save lives now and protect future generations from reliving this experience.
Also read: Covid-19 has set global health progress decades back: Gates Foundation
Several rich countries have reserved millions of doses of vaccines. Does that mean that poor and marginalized people will be the last to get vaccinated? How are BMGF and its partners ensuring equitable access to vaccines?
We are working with many partners on several different fronts to prevent that from happening. One of the key partners is Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, which has 20 years of experience helping low-income countries immunize their people. Gavi is helping to support the Serum Institute in the agreement I just mentioned, and is one of the main partners in an initiative called COVAX, which brings countries together to pool investments in the development, manufacturing and delivery of vaccines in a way fair throughout the world. So far, around 80 countries have committed to the COVAX Fund, so momentum is gathering momentum. In the next month, one of our priorities is to help raise the money needed to ensure vaccines do not go to the highest bidder.
Have we ever had partnerships for a health response on this scale? Is this the future?
That is one of the great tests of this historical moment. Will we see new collaboration models emerge to face this new type of crisis, or will countries turn inward and try to combat a global problem with national interventions? The root cause of everything that is happening is a virus that knows no borders. Borders are also becoming less and less important to the world economy. While policies that stop at borders can help the citizens of a given country cope with the symptoms of the crisis, they will not stop it. All countries will benefit when all countries work together to find solutions. Hopefully, this crisis will help the world understand that and act accordingly.
What is the role of technology and data in the Covid-19 response?
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of data. Right now, while we wait for treatments and vaccines and have to rely on non-pharmaceutical interventions like contract tracing, quarantine, and social distancing to contain the disease, we need to know precisely how it is spreading. The more countries know about who is at risk, the more likely they can devise strategies to keep the number of cases low. When new treatments and vaccines become available, data will be critical in helping the world determine how these new tools are changing disease patterns. As we learn more about Covid-19, we will get better at fighting, but only if we have access to the data we need to put those lessons into practice.
You have been saying that the world is not prepared for the next pandemic since the H1N1 flu in 2009. Are we better prepared now?
We now know a lot more about what it takes to be fully prepared. We’ve seen examples of partners working in new ways that will help prevent the next pandemic from causing as much damage as this one. For example, scientific researchers are collaborating to invent more new solutions, faster. Global health organizations are creating innovative partnerships to coordinate their responses. But we will have to watch carefully over the next few years to see if the world moves on to institutionalize all this new knowledge and new capabilities. That will mean investing enough in a permanent pandemic preparedness and response infrastructure so that we are never caught off guard again.
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