In the race to develop a vaccine to end the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, charities and Big Pharma firms are sinking billions of dollars into bets with extraordinarily low odds of success.
FILE PHOTO: Small bottles labbeled with a"Vaccine COVID-19" sticker and a medical syringe are seen in this illustration taken taken April 10, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Investments from governments, global health groups and philanthropies have been aimed primarily at the most promising of the more than 100 vaccine candidates in development worldwide. But only a handful of those have advanced to human trials, the real indicator of safety and efficacy - and the stage where most vaccines wash out.
“We want to make investments up front, at risk, even before we know the vaccines work, to be able to manufacture them at a scale of tens or hundreds of millions of doses,” said Richard Hatchett, a physician who managed U.S. pandemic flu policy under former President George W. Bush and returned to advise the Obama White House during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
Having reserves ready worldwide to immediately inoculate critical populations - health care workers, the elderly, people made vulnerable by medical conditions - would stamp out the pandemic faster and reignite economies, Hatchett said. The alternative, he said, is a replay of past pandemics, including the H1N1 influenza outbreak of 2009, with wealthy countries hoarding the vaccines.
Many of the candidates attracting the most investment rely on proven vaccine approaches being adapted by Big Pharma companies with regulatory and production acumen. Some funders are gambling on smaller biotech companies and academic labs, which may have promising technologies but little to no experience getting a drug or vaccine approved and produced at scale.
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