Is there a way to accelerate the COVID-19 vaccine-making progress?

In general, these timelines are very difficult to compress. The last thing drugmakers and regulators want is to rush out a subpar product and create—rather than solve—a public health crisis. Making vaccines is so cost-intensive and high risk that most pharmaceutical firms don’t do it anymore. Today, the vaccine business is dominated by just four companies: Pfizer, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Sanofi. Since they’re the ones with the kind of capacity required to fight a global pandemic, they’re the ones that have to be convinced it’ll be worth it.

Covid-19 might seem like a sure bet now. But outbreaks are unpredictable. SARS disappeared just four months after it caused a global panic. The companies that had begun developing vaccines against it had to abandon their trials because there just weren’t enough patients. Similar disease cycles help explain why it took so long to get an Ebola vaccine, which was only approved last December despite dozens of outbreaks since it first emerged in 1976. Plus, government funding and pharmaceutical industry interest tend to evaporate once the sense of emergency fades away. No one wants to make a product that’s not going to be used.

But there are some things governments can do to encourage vaccine makers to take up the challenge despite its riskiness, including providing grants and other financial incentives to spur their involvement. In the US, a division of the Department of Human & Health Services known as the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority often plays the role of incentivizing medical countermeasures against an outbreak. BARDA has so far funded four projects to address Covid-19, including two vaccines, in partnership with Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi. In recent years, an international nonprofit called Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, has also raised money to invest in vaccine research. So far, it has committed more than $66 million to vaccine development efforts against Covid-19.

The fact that Big Pharma players have already taken an interest doesn’t mean that a vaccine will arrive any faster. But it does suggest that these companies believe Covid-19 will be around for the long term, and may be willing to lend their manufacturing muscle to ensure that a vaccine, when it arrives, can be produced en masse.

Source: www.wired.com/story/everything-you-need-to-know-about-coronavirus-vaccines/