Race for a COVID-19 vaccine

Scientists in China released the complete genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 on January 10, 2020. On December 8, 2020, health officials in London began administering an effective coronavirus vaccine to the public. The global scientific community successfully developed a COVID-19 vaccine in just 332 days.

I’m a statistician, and this year I was on the panel of judges for the Royal Statistical Society’s International Statistics of the Year. Like the Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” competition, we chose a statistic that aims to capture the spirit of the time of year.

The 332-day statistic was the clear and prominent winner. After a year of terrible tragedy, economic hardship and pain, this number represents an unprecedented collaboration in the history of medicine that gives hope of returning to normal in 2021.

The fastest vaccine development in history

In 1981, researchers established the link between the human papillomavirus and cervical cancer, a disease that still causes hundreds of thousands of deaths per year around the world. But it wasn’t until 2006, more than 25 years later, that the first HPV vaccine was developed in the US.

On average, it takes more than 10 years to develop a vaccine. Before this year, the fastest vaccine development was for the mumps vaccine. That took four years.

In April 2020, The New York Times raised multiple scenarios with vaccine experts about how long it would take to get a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Under normal circumstances, experts estimated, a vaccine would be ready by November 2033.

So how is it possible for researchers to get a vaccine to market in just 332 days?

Government financial investment

Several things helped get this vaccine made quickly, including international collaboration of invisible proportions, an accelerated testing phase process, and the biology of the virus itself. In addition to these efforts, a very important reason for the incredible speed was the enormous amount of investment made by governments at the beginning of the pandemic.

Pharmaceutical companies typically have limited resources that they are willing to spend on vaccine development, and governments are typically unwilling to invest infinite money in a process that they are not sure will work.

The COVID-19 pandemic has ruined the entire playbook. As of this writing, 641 therapies and 189 vaccines related to COVID-19 are being developed, most of which are funded by the government.

The US government invested in various vaccines with the understanding that some of them would not work, but in the hope that some would. Under Operation Warp Speed, the US government quickly pledged almost $ 9 billion to fund vaccine development and production. Moderna, whose vaccine is expected to become the second licensed for use in the U.S. after Pfizer’s, received just under $ 1 billion in federal funding, with another $ 1.5 billion per 100 million. dose. While this number alone isn’t surprising, vaccine development tends to cost between $ 521 million and $ 2.1 billion – this was just one of many expensive projects.

Funds from governments and private donors were also used to build manufacturing facilities on the assumption that a vaccine was imminent and the usual regulatory hurdles would be quickly overcome. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helped fund seven factories in April, although only one or two of the factories will be used.

This inflow of money into multiple vaccines and early preparation for manufacturing was critical to developing and distributing a vaccine in record time. The development of COVID-19 vaccines is a testament to the ingenuity, dedication, and collaborative efforts of the scientific community. At the end of a seemingly desperate year, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

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