Moving on the fast track to produce at least 11 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine

The world’s largest vaccine maker has warned that there won’t be enough Covid-19 vaccines until late 2024 at the earliest. REUTERS via The Straits Times / Asia News Network

SINGAPORE – Never before has humanity tried to produce something so fast for every living person on Earth as it is now.

With a handful of Covid-19 vaccine candidates raising hopes in recent days that a viable one could soon be found, global attention is shifting to where the prized product can be made and whether enough quantities can be produced. fast enough for everyone.

Today’s leading vaccine candidates in the United States include one being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and another by Moderna. China’s experimental vaccines from Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm, as well as Russia’s Sputnik V, are also believed to show promise. All of them require two doses per person.

Will there be enough vaccines?

Given a world population of 7.8 billion and with the World Health Organization setting the threshold for herd immunity to Covid-19 at around 70 percent, it would take around 11 billion doses of vaccine if any of these candidates were to prove effective. .

The figure does not yet take into account waste from potential challenges in production, transportation, storage and handling. Production of other vaccines will also need to continue while coronavirus vaccines are made. The world’s vaccine factories have to rapidly increase their capacity to address that.

The world’s largest vaccine maker, the Serum Institute of India, has already warned that there simply won’t be enough Covid-19 vaccines to distribute until the end of 2024 at the earliest.

“It will take four to five years for everyone on this planet to get the vaccine,” CEO Adar Poonawalla told the Financial Times in September when he warned that companies were not increasing capacity fast enough.

The most recent estimate on global Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity has British research firm Airfinity putting it at more than 16 billion by the end of 2021. However, actual viable doses may drop by as much as two-thirds, after having factor in the probability of failure every step of the way, according to projections by the European think-tank The Yellow House.

Additionally, the world’s richest nations have already reserved 9.5 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to an analysis conducted last week by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center’s Launch and Scale Speedometer initiative.

Canada alone has insured enough to vaccinate its population five times more, the report revealed. The United States could also have access to more than 1 billion doses of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech alone next year, more than is needed for the nation’s 330 million residents.

“It is sadly inevitable that the demand for Covid-19 vaccines will vastly exceed supply in the short term, leaving most people unprotected,” said Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, the vaccine development alliance as well. known as the Coalition for Epidemic. Innovations in preparation.

Where will the vaccines be made?

The coalition has set a goal of ensuring the production of 2 billion doses of the coronavirus vaccine by the end of next year for distribution to those who need them most.

A CEPI survey of 113 vaccine manufacturers in May and June found that a third of them were based in the US, while India and China together account for about a quarter of them.

While the world’s top five vaccine manufacturers by revenue all come from the US and Europe, it may be India and China, with their vast production capacity and potential, that hold the key to creating enough coronavirus vaccine to supply. to the world.

India has long been ingrained in the global supply chain, earning itself the nickname “the world’s pharmacy” for its exports of high-quality, low-cost medicines. It supplies about 60 percent of the world’s vaccines.

Mr. Poonawalla of the Serum Institute, who aims to increase the company’s Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity to 1 billion doses through 2021, has pledged that “50 percent of any quantity we manufacture will remain for India and the rest it will be reduced to and middle income countries ”.

China, on the other hand, has so far primarily served its domestic market, with its fragmented industry of thousands of small vaccine makers plagued by safety scandals over the past few years. Less than 5 percent of vaccines made in China are sold abroad.

But Beijing’s confirmation last month that it would join the Covax initiative to ensure the equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines around the world may help integrate it into the global supply chain and gain gradual acceptance internationally to as their manufacturers provide vaccines prequalified by WHO to other countries. the world.

Covax, which aims to raise US $ 18 billion (S $ 24 billion) for its cause, is co-led by WHO, CEPI and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and supported by more than 180 member countries, including Great Britain. , France, Germany and Japan. and Singapore. The United States under President Donald Trump is not part of the effort, calling it too restrictive.

A multilateral effort

It is difficult to say exactly where the coronavirus vaccines will be made. Many countries are in the game, each with a vital role to play in rebuilding the end products that can end the pandemic that has already cost more than a million lives.

Among them, Great Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and France’s Sanofi, respectively the world’s first and third-largest vaccine manufacturer by revenue, are together ramping up manufacturing of their candidate vaccine components.

“One country cannot think of making a vaccine on its own,” said a GSK spokesman.

Elsewhere, Moderna from the United States and Lonza from Switzerland have also partnered with Lonza by expanding their facilities around the world to increase production of Moderna’s experimental vaccine. Indonesia’s sole vaccine manufacturer Bio Farma has partnered with Sinovac Biotech to manufacture the final product from active ingredients provided by the Chinese pharmaceutical giant.

Even tiny Singapore, in its role as a global biomedical hub, has built additional capacity to provide vaccine developers with contamination-free drug fillings in vials and syringes.

As countries come together like never before to create a vaccine that solves the world’s collective suffering, all will do well to remember that there can be no faster and safer way to achieve this shared goal except through cooperation and collaboration. unconditional.

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