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Fighting the coronavirus pandemic will result in the fastest developing and fastest-distributing vaccine in human history, said the head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, adding that research on the treatment could pay off in only 12 months.
“We are very confident that there will be a vaccine. It will be the fastest vaccine ever created in human history, and it will reach people faster than ever,” said Mark Suzman, CEO of the US-based philanthropic organization on Friday. United. in an exclusive interview with Caixin.
Their comments come as scientists around the world compete to develop treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus that has officially infected about 3 million people and killed more than 200,000, according to a count maintained by the Johns Hopkins University in the USA USA
While governments, businesses, and individuals fund promising projects, in many cases charities also step in to provide money and other resources. Earlier this month, the Gates Foundation pledged another $ 150 million for the battle against the pandemic, in addition to the $ 100 million it had previously pledged.
Much of that money will go toward developing a vaccine, but some will also fund testing and prevention of COVID-19 in developing countries where health resources are scarce, Suzman said.
That is important for regions of the southern hemisphere that are just now entering the winter flu season, he said, citing examples from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. “Until you have scale tests, we’re kind of flying blind.”
The key to where the money ends is what Suzman calls “global access”: ensuring that solutions to the crisis are directed at all countries in the world, not just the most developed ones.
“For a global pandemic, we need global solutions,” he said. “That means that when there is a vaccine, we will have to make 7 billion doses of that vaccine. That is unprecedented.”
Despite his optimism that an effective treatment will be found, Suzman cautioned that any potential vaccine remains for up to a year.
“Twelve months [is] probable. That is probably our best case, “he said.” Maybe … if everything goes well, it will be a little faster than that. “
Read on for Caixin’s full interview with Mark Suzman. The dialogue has been edited for clarity.
Caixin: What is the thinking behind the additional investment of $ 150 million in the fight against the virus?
Suzman: Well, obviously, governments around the world are putting significant resources, as well as the private sector and other partners. But we still see some critical areas where, like philanthropy, we can be catalytic.
You are really using our resources wisely on things, for example, expanding what we call a therapeutic accelerator. That is the race to find safe and effective treatments that we can [use to] Smartly provide direct support in developing countries to help them with testing and prevention, because they have not yet seen the wave in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia. And of course, [it’s] the search for a vaccine, which will be the key to a long-term solution where we work with some partners such as the Coalition for Innovation in Preparation for Epidemics.
We feel that, hopefully, our resources will come and help align other partners, including governments and the private sector, in important ways, and that is why we made the additional announcement.
How does the foundation predict that COVID-19 will be extended in the short and medium term?
We have an associated group called Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations, which has been analyzing many global efforts, and also a group called Institute for Disease Modeling, which we financially support and provide broader advice to governments around the world. the world.
There is still a lot we don’t know about the disease. Makes it difficult to trace. We know that the general policies of social distancing and contact tracing and others can help bring it down, as China and other countries show, but we still do not have effective treatments, and obviously we still do not have a vaccine. Until the tests are on a sufficient scale, it is very difficult to predict and understand what will happen, especially in those large and densely populated developing countries where social distancing is really impossible, in large urban slums, in places like Nigeria, for example or Bangladesh.
We are nervous We think we are starting to turn the corner and be able [to control it] in some of the richest countries in Europe and here in the United States. … But we are very nervous about what could happen in some of those larger developing countries.
More than 100 potential vaccines for COVID-19 are currently being developed. How does the foundation choose which ones to sponsor?
Well, we do two things. As a base, we are not a company that is rushing to find our own vaccine. There is a kind of race going on among many companies, including several Chinese companies, that are trying to do it.
We just have a lot of very smart scientists on our own staff and we support efforts like … the Coalition for Outbreak Preparedness Innovations, which actually has multiple partners, and our hope is that China can become a partner in the future as well. It has several governments, as well as private philanthropy that supports it.
What it does is they both analyze all those efforts … and just try to track [them] and say, well, which ones do we think could have the best opportunity, could be the most effective? Then he directly funds a subset, based on his best science.
The condition of that financing, when it comes from CEPI or any direct financing on our part, is that it must have what we call “global access”. Most governments are trying to finance problems for their own citizens. We understand that; This is very important. But for a global pandemic, we need to have global solutions. That means that when there is a vaccine, we will have to make 7 billion doses of that vaccine. That is quite unprecedented. Actually, you should think ahead and say, “Well, what are the ways that we can bring together a full set of partners and make sure that we are focusing on the most effective vaccines?”
It is better than a guessing game, we are not guessing, but we know that the vast majority of those tests will fail. We’re really just trying to find which of the subsets has the highest probability of success, and then we can help support [them]. Even if it’s not in direct financing, we could be looking for long-term manufacturing support or other efforts to try to get something safe and effective for people as quickly as possible.
Why does the foundation focus more on the vaccine than on a wonderful drug? [that could cure the disease]?
Well, we are doing all of that. [Part] of that, we have a long experience in vaccines. The foundation is 20 years old and … our main component of work is in global health and infectious diseases that disproportionately affect the poorest.
One of our largest partnerships is with a group called GAVI Vaccine Alliance. We have spent many billions of dollars to finance them in the last two decades, [and they have] It has probably been the group most responsible for reducing preventable child deaths in Africa and Asia. We have seen that preventable child deaths dropped from 10 million a year to less than 5 million a year.
And that’s through vaccines: pneumonia vaccines; against rotavirus that causes diarrhea; against measles and rubella; and … against polio. We see the power of vaccines. We have a lot of direct experience. We finance a lot of work on vaccines. It is just an area where we have great experience.
But we are also working on diagnosis and treatment. We are definitely not exclusively on vaccines. I have mentioned funding this thing we call Global Therapeutics Accelerator, which has actually tried to get many large pharmaceutical companies around the world to share their compound libraries. These are drugs that already have tests that are safe for humans, and we can do very quick tests and see if any of them might be suitable for treating the coronavirus, because we could use them very quickly. They don’t have to go through all the complicated tests.
And similarly, we are also working on whether we can get very quick and cheap diagnostic tests that are not yet available at scale, because you need them again in these poor countries that do not have the kind of access to meaningful tests that you might have in China or in the richest countries in the West.
Do you think the extra money will speed up the creation and production of the vaccine?
Yes. We are very sure that there will be a vaccine. It will be the fastest vaccine ever created in human history, and it will reach people faster than ever.
But even that still means 12 months. [is] probable [before it comes out]. That is probably our best case. Maybe, maybe, maybe if everything goes well, it will be a little faster than that.
We hope that our resources now, and bringing all of these partners together, will help accelerate that. But we must think in parallel about manufacturing and distribution. Who will get the vaccine first? What are the priorities? You should go to the front-line healthcare workers first. You must go to the vulnerable and the elderly. How do we ensure that rich people or rich countries not only buy all vaccines on their own and do not make them much more widely available, globally?
Those are the kinds of questions that we hope our resources right now really help the world think about, because it has to be a global solution to what is a global problem, although right now we have many, many different national efforts.
Given the lack of medical supplies and equipment in many of the world’s poorest countries, do you think COVID-19 will soon spread widely in Africa or South Asia?
That is what we are very concerned about. There is still, again, so much that we don’t know about the coronavirus. How seasonal is it? Could there be a large wave entering the southern hemisphere? [as it moves] in your flu season? [That] it would affect parts of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa and a bit of Southeast Asia. In which case, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, will we have a second wave when the flu season returns in the fall, in the winter?
Until you have scale tests, we’re flying blind, if you like. You just don’t know: Are we missing a lot of evidence? Are deaths happening that we just don’t know? [about] in this countries? What are the steps you can take to help with social isolation? [and] social distancing when you are in very densely populated slums? Could you find and build, and we’re actually working with some African countries and a couple of Indian states on some pilots to see, could you create … big field hospital tents out of these slums, which actually Would they allow for a patient to quickly isolate themselves in a way that they could not do at home? Because if you are living three or four people in one room, you cannot do that.
Those are the planning steps and those that we are carrying out, but it is at the same time to develop the capacity of test and to put into practice the basic treatment. As you say, they don’t have the facilities.
But we do know some very important things, like even if you don’t have enough ventilators, simple oxygen supply is very effective for most COVID-19 diseases except very serious ones. However, we have great challenges in the basic oxygen supply in Africa. If we can get it right, that not only helps the coronavirus response, but will also help with all of our regular work on, for example, maternal and child health, because oxygen provision is often critical to that when you have complicated deliveries. or others that kind of thing.
Bill Gates warned of a pandemic in 2015. Why did the alarm go off then?
Many people have seen the potential for threats like this and talked about it. But I think because as a foundation we do a lot of work on infectious diseases and we can see those challenges, and actually their big call … came after the Ebola crisis in West Africa, where we were very lucky with Ebola. Ebola is very difficult to catch. Actually, you should touch someone infected in the later stages of the disease. It is not very transmissible and it was very difficult to reach parts of the world. Even then, it was devastating.
If you just think what would happen if you had a respiratory illness that could contract much more quickly and that people who still didn’t show symptoms could transmit it, that would be the nightmare scenario that could quickly spread around the world and that we should launch now, and now it was five years ago, preventive measures for surveillance, monitoring, protective equipment, [and] have the machinery in place to quickly assemble a vaccine or treatment.
By asking for that, we hoped it would be implemented. Clearly, that did not happen. Our hope and belief is that next time, it will. We hope that it does not have to be the result of a crisis like the current COVID-19 crisis, but it shows how serious the preparation for this must be and why no country can do it.
Some right-wing opinion leaders claim that Gates plans to use the pandemic to control the global health system. What do you think about that?
It is always very distressing for us when we see people who make crude accusations like that. As a foundation that focuses on doing nothing more than helping the poorest and most needy around the world, we are very transparent and open about absolutely all of our work and investments. We have nothing to hide. There is no such thing and it is completely ridiculous and absolutely offensive often when you hear accusations like that about what we are trying to do and how we are trying to help.
And it’s dangerous, because that kind of misinformation can actually deter the kind of collaboration we need to get these accelerated treatments and avoid vaccinations and other steps.
All we can do is be honest and open about our work and alliances and say that everything we do is based on the best science available, and we hope that the facts and work we do speak for themselves.
History shows that health crises tend to lead to redistribution of wealth and political reconstruction. What is your perspective?
Yes, well, that goes beyond health problems in the broader socio-economic impacts that are felt worldwide and will still reverberate. [the] impact on education, impacts on broader health care.
There is a phrase that partners already use: “Rebuild better”. Can we use something like the COVID-19 crisis to think [being] better at all levels? Are there ways to use this artificial acceleration in online learning? Because many millions upon millions of students have had to switch to doing everything online to transform opportunities so that smart and strong online platforms can really help provide education for many. How many disadvantaged students who historically have not had access to a really good education?
Similarly, are there smart ways now to do health consultations or constructs or other things like that where we can use and take advantage of this crisis to think of a more balanced and equitable set of priorities and institutions that help ensure that every Does a person have the opportunity to have a healthy and productive life, which is exactly what our mission as a foundation is to try and help provide?
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Also read the original story.
Caixinglobal.com is the online English news portal of the Chinese financial and commercial news media group Caixin. Nikkei recently agreed with the company to exchange articles in English.
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