Anthony Fauci on June 30.
Photo credit: Al Drago / Bloomberg
Photo credit: Al Drago / Bloomberg
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The world needs more than one vaccine to tackle the new coronavirus, even as pharmaceutical companies compete to be the first to receive a pandemic vaccine, US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said.
“I would love to see more than one vaccine reach the goal, so to speak,” Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a BBC radio interview on Thursday. “The world needs more than one vaccine.”
Pharmacists like Pfizer Inc., AstraZeneca Plc, Moderna Inc. and dozens of other biopharmaceutical teams and academic groups compete to create a safe and effective vaccine against Covid-19. With nearly 10.5 million confirmed cases worldwide and more than half a million deaths, drug makers are under increasing pressure to give birth.
It will be necessary to have multiple vaccines not only to produce the billions of doses necessary to meet demand worldwide. Some drug manufacturers focus on specific needs, such as making an injection that lasts longer or does not require strict cold storage supply chains. And of course there is the possibility of unexpected setbacks or failures.
“You have to be careful if you are temporarily leading the way rather than having a vaccine that is really going to work,” Fauci said when asked about one of the most advanced contenders in development at the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNtech SE launched some Promising results in its experimental shot on Wednesday, but any optimism about development progress was clouded when regulators in the United States released the conditions for the vaccine’s approval. The Food and Drug Administration said any candidate would need to try at least 50% more effective than a placebo at gaining clearance, rather than simply displaying immune response data. That may delay the first shots until the beginning of next year, analysts said.
(Updates with reasons behind the need for multiple vaccines in the fourth paragraph)
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