As government lockdowns focus on limiting the spread of the coronavirus, scientists around the world are working on treating and protecting us.
They have their work cut out. Vaccine and drug development is laborious, full of experimentation and repeated testing. Knowing how the virus works is key.
But what other challenges do they face? And how long will it take before we can defeat this virus with a pill or an injection?
Start Here explains.
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Let’s talk about everyone’s big hope. A coronavirus vaccine for all and treatments for the sick. Hundreds of vaccines and drugs are being tested around the world in record time. What we’re trying to do is to take something that usually takes 15 years and truncate it down to a few months. We all have questions. And some of you sent us yours. When can we expect a vaccine? Who will get it first? How much will it cost? And here’s one from us do we need a vaccine to get back to our normal lives? There is no cure for SARS-CoV-2 the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19. But a vaccine and the right drugs can help our bodies fight it. So this is what we’re up against. The virus has a crown of spikes made of protein molecules. They attach to human cells and act like a key in a lock that lets the virus in. Once inside the virus hijacks the cell’s reproductive machinery to make copies of itself. A vaccine protects you by mimicking a small part of the virus. We would take a little part of that protein surface of the virus killing the virus and we would inject it into people to see if they would make antibodies to it. If that real virus came in then the antibody would immediately recognise it and would immediately take care of it. But there are different ways of making a vaccine. Some labs are taking the more traditional route. They’re testing whether introducing different parts of the spike protein into humans can trigger an immune response. But this sort of protein-based vaccine typically takes years to develop because scientists have to grow the protein and test it’s safe. So other labs are working on a different strategy that’s never been done before. It involves copying a small section of the virus’s RNA genetic code and injecting that into a person. That RNA fragment then instructs human cells to reproduce certain coronavirus proteins and hopefully that triggers an immune response. Using the RNA approach means you don’t have to grow the coronavirus protein in a lab the body does all the hard work. Hopefully this will take months out of the process and will get us a vaccine sooner. But again we’re in uncharted territory here. Now usually a vaccine takes up to 10 or even 15 years to test manufacture and distribute if a vaccine candidate even makes it that far. But we don’t have that kind of time. Labs around the world got to work as soon as a Chinese scientist published the virus’s genetic sequence in January. It’s a game with high stakes. Governments, public institutions, philanthropists they’re all involved. Private companies in places like the US China and Germany — they’re all competing. But some researchers are also working together on open platforms. We haven’t seen such an acceleration in sharing information and sharing data. To give you an idea of how fast things are moving it took seven months to start human trials during the Zika epidemic. That was a record. For this new coronavirus it took just 63 days. But testing on people is just one step. The manufacturing, I think, is going to be the real challenge. And we need to make sure that we’re ramping that up right now alongside the clinical trials that are under way. Based on most estimates we could get a new vaccine sometime early next year. But it’ll take longer for it to get to millions of people. One of the vaccine makers Johnson & Johnson says that won’t happen before late next year. And there’s going to be a bottleneck. So who gets it first? During the H1N1 swine flu in 2009 one of the first vaccines was made in Australia. The government was criticised for making sure it went to Australians first. The concern this time around is that countries will want to do the same thing again. And there’s reason for that concern. Right now there is no international body to police distribution of a vaccine. Not even the WHO has that power. Nor is there a global plan for a co-ordinated rollout. Groups like the GAVI vaccine alliance and CEPI, though are working to get vaccines to developing countries. And the WHO has emergency rules in place that were set up during the Ebola epidemic. They say any new vaccine should first go to the people who need it most — like frontline workers. There’s also pressure on the pharmaceutical industry not to chase big profits. Millions of people need the vaccine so the demand will be huge. And governments can’t afford to pay top dollar. The thing is vaccines are expensive to make. CEPI and the Wellcome Trust think it’ll cost the industry $3 billion to develop, manufacture and distribute a vaccine globally. It might be worthwhile for a private company to make it have a good standing in the public eye to say we’re going to do this at a reduced cost this is a humanitarian thing. The Gates foundation is likely going to blow billions of dollars to build production facilities for seven vaccine candidates knowing some of those vaccines won’t make the grade. The idea is to ensure we’re ready to go once a vaccine is found. We will make it as cheap as we can. And there is no doubt the money will be — should be found to buy that vaccine for everyone on the planet. A vaccine is the long-term goal. So right now scientists are using experimental treatments to help people already sick with COVID-19. Like plasma therapy which involves collecting antibodies from people who’ve recovered and injecting them into infected patients. They’re also trying out drugs in early development or already on the market for other diseases like the antiviral remdesivir that was developed for Ebola or hydroxychloroquine used for malaria. There are many candidates therapeutics or drugs that are showing some promise or potential. But we need to be exceptionally careful. It’s extremely important that we rely on the results that are going to come from trials that will tell us how safe and effective these drugs are. And then there are the so-called treatments that have raised alarm bells. The idea of injecting disinfectant got lots of laughs online. I think most people are smart enough to know that they shouldn’t be taking medical or public health advice from President Trump they should be listening to expert opinion. With every vaccine or drug there’s a calculated risk. With measles for instance your chance of dying from the disease is about one in a thousand. But the chances of having an adverse reaction to the vaccine are less than one in a million. Any medical response is going to be experimental and might come with side effects. Because no drug or vaccine has been licensed for this coronavirus. It’s new. But we also know that vaccines have saved millions of lives. Mumps, measles, the Asian flu all those epidemics that killed hundreds of millions of people are nearly all gone now. Experimental vaccines were also used to fight Ebola. And that epidemic has largely been contained. The ultimate goal is to slam the brakes on the virus’s ability to spread. And building immunity is key. At the moment one infected person gives it to roughly three other people who each infect three more and so on. But if we create what’s called herd immunity we can bring that right down. The idea is for about 60% of people to become immune to the coronavirus either by recovering from it or getting vaccinated. That way we reduce transmission from one person to just one other person or less. The key is to get to 60% as fast as possible. That strain of the virus will now no longer be a threat and it will go away. But we aren’t there yet. Which is why the experts say it’ll be a while before life can return to normal. If we have one-time social distancing there’s a very good chance that a large number of people will remain susceptible to infection. It seems like naturally we’re going to enter into this intermittent social-distancing period. And in order to reach a high enough level of immunity in the population our model suggests that it could take into 2022. It’s also worth remembering that until we get those treatments and a vaccine most of us around 80% can rely on our own immune systems to fight the coronavirus. So the general advice is to stay healthy, eat well sleep well and exercise even if you’re stuck at home. Because that’s where we need to be right now to protect people who are most at risk while we all wait for the science to catch up. “We don’t know when we’ll be back on the Start Here set but not to worry. We’re still going to be bringing you more episodes any way we can. In the meantime our website aljazeera.com has all the latest on the coronavirus pandemic. I’ll see you next week.”
