People world over have been fighting the virus for the past 6 months and more. What have we learnt so far?

Countries that have implemented lockdowns early and started extensive testing, such as South Korea and Iceland, have been able to avoid lockdowns, keep their societies relatively open but without the virus getting the better.

Singapore controlled its initial wave by retracing the steps of people who tested positive for COVID-19 and putting in isolation those that came in contact them and levying harsh penalties for breaking the isolation rules. Those with even mild symptoms were quarantined in hospitals.

When containing cases was no longer possible Europe showed that physical distancing measures, implemented early, “flatten the curve” and reduce the overall size of the outbreak.  Early lockdown worked in containing the epidemic, whereas a late lockdown led to a massive outbreak. This is irrespective of the development or health system of a country.

Some countries such as Britain hesitated initially at the prospect of drastically curbing civil rights.  Italian industry groups are reported to have strongly resisted shutting down Lombardy, one of the engines of the country’s economy.

Countries like Pakistan have had to balance the slowing down of the spread with disastrous consequences of closing farms and construction sites where the poorest work.  There were blind spots in the way countries prepared. A global index released in October said that the US was more ready than anyone else to fight a pandemic, but it was based more on the technical capacity than government processes.  It turned out that the US has had the largest and most deadly outbreak with a misleading slow initial response, mismanagement of testing and poor coordination between States and the federal government.

This outbreak proved that with the best labs in the world, the best systems and software, if you do not  have appropriate governance of when to use these powers,  these do not work.

There are more than one hundred vaccines in preclinical development by pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, government agencies and others. More than seventy of these are being tracked by the World Health Organization.  The United States, China, Australia, UK, Germany, South Korea and Russia are some of the countries which have started clinical trials.  Vaccines are frequently collaborative efforts across sectors of society, with private pharmaceutical firms teaming up with public health agencies or university labs. For instance, a recently approved Ebola vaccine was ultimately developed by multinational pharmaceutical company Merck but also involved Canadian and U.S. public health agencies, a tiny Iowa-based biotech firm, U.S. Defense Department researchers, and the WHO.

1.   Public health agencies play critical roles in vaccine research, supplying funds to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.  The U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to assist the development of vaccines by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

2.     The WHO and other multilateral institutions such as the World Bank are focused on financing and manufacturing a COVID-19 vaccine for global use, in particular to ensure fair allocation among all countries. Also at the forefront of multilateral efforts is CEPI, a global alliance that was founded by Norway, the Gates Foundation in India and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance founded by the Gates Foundation, the UK-based Wellcome Trust and the World Economic Forum etc. Gavi already raised more than $2 billion to buy approved COVID-19 vaccines for global distribution.

3.     The pharmaceutical industry is driving much of the push toward a vaccine. Companies ranging from biotech start-ups to giants such as Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Sinopharm have rapidly shifted their research and development (R&D) efforts to focus on COVID-19. While early research into a vaccine candidate typically receives government funding the bulk of financing for clinical development generally comes from private sources.

4.      Many of the COVID-19 vaccine candidates involve a university or college assisting in pre-clinical research or clinical trials. In the case of the University of Oxford’s candidate, the research team was already working on vaccines for an unknown disease that could cause a pandemic. In January, the group zeroed in on COVID-19 and their vaccine is now in phase-three trials with thousands of volunteers in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa. The Gates Foundation has been the leading non-profit funding COVID-19 vaccine efforts.

The latest good news is from Russia. Reports indicate that Russia has claimed to have become the first nation to complete clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine on humans, but this has been questioned.  What most of these reports did not specifically mention is that only phase-I of the clinical trials had been completed. Phase-II trials are supposed to start immediately, while there is no clarity over phase-III trials.  There was no further information on when this vaccine would enter commercial production stage.

We at Haat are busy shipping incinerators to African countries directly and through relief agencies for disposal of COVID-19 wastes.