Developing coronavirus vaccines are not guaranteed to work, and people who hope to develop a vaccine before the end of the year are “seriously harming the public,” the head of Merck & Co Inc said, according to a report by Harvard Business Review.
Potential vaccines may not have the qualities necessary to rapidly deploy in large numbers, Chief Executive Kenneth Frazier said in an interview published Monday.
“If you’re going to use a vaccine on billions of people, you better know what that vaccine does,” he said.
A United States official said Monday that drug makers associated with the United States government are on track to begin actively manufacturing a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the summer, Reuters reported.
The Trump administration aims to produce 300 million doses of vaccines by the end of 2021 through its Operation Warp Speed Program.
Some previous vaccines “not only did not confer protection, but actually helped the virus to invade the cell, because it was incomplete in terms of its immunogenic properties,” said Frazier. “So we have to be very careful.”
Merck announced plans in May to study potential vaccine candidates and therapies for COVID-19 through partnerships and the acquisition of Austrian vaccine maker Themis Bioscience. You have not started clinical trials for your vaccine.
Frazier, one of only four black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, said the US pandemic, with a higher death rate among people of color, has highlighted “huge structural elements of racism that have existed in this country for long time”.
American companies must work to dismantle the processes and systems that prevent black employees from advancing, he said. “At the end of the day, if you are complacent with the status quo, you are complicit in the racism behind the status quo.”
Modern vaccine candidate
US researchers reported Tuesday that drug maker Moderna’s experimental vaccine for COVID-19 was shown to be safe and elicited immune responses in the 45 healthy volunteers in an ongoing early-stage study.
The volunteers who received two doses of the vaccine had high levels of anti-virus antibodies that exceeded the average levels seen in people who had recovered from COVID-19, the team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
No study volunteer experienced a serious side effect, but more than half reported mild or moderate reactions such as fatigue, headache, chills, muscle aches, or injection site pain. They were more likely to occur after the second dose and in people who received the highest dose.
Experts say a vaccine is needed to end the coronavirus pandemic that has sickened millions and caused nearly 575,000 deaths worldwide.
Moderna was the first to begin human testing of a vaccine for the new coronavirus on March 16, 66 days after the release of the virus’ genetic sequence.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whose researchers developed the candidate vaccine for Moderna, called the results “good news” and noted that the study found no serious adverse events and that the vaccine produced levels of “reasonably high” viruses. -to kill or neutralize antibodies.
“If your vaccine can induce a response comparable to natural infection, that’s a winner,” Fauci said in a telephone interview with Reuters. “So we are very satisfied with the results.”
Moderna’s shares rose more than 15 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday and gave Asian stocks an early boost.
SOURCE:
Reuters news agency
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