Discussions and disputes over who will get first serve of the Coronavirus Vaccine have aleady begun.

U.S. Likely to Get Sanofi Vaccine First If It Succeeds
By James Paton, Riley Griffin, and Cynthia Koons
13 May 2020, 20:11 GMT+7 Updated on 14 May 2020, 03:34 GMT+7
Americans will likely get Sanofi’s Covid-19 vaccine before the rest of the world if the French pharmaceutical giant can successfully deliver one.

That’s because the U.S. was first in line to fund Sanofi’s vaccine research, Chief Executive Officer Paul Hudson said in an interview with Bloomberg News. He warned that Europe risks falling behind unless it steps up efforts to seek protection against a pandemic that’s killed more than 290,000 people worldwide.

“The U.S. government has the right to the largest pre-order because it’s invested in taking the risk,” Hudson said. The U.S., which expanded a vaccine partnership with the company in February, expects “that if we’ve helped you manufacture the doses at risk, we expect to get the doses first.”

Sanofi is one of the biggest players among the dozens of companies seeking a vaccine, which is needed to reboot economies after a lockdown-induced plunge in output. It has partnered with U.K. rival GlaxoSmithKline Plc on the project supported by the U.S. and says it could make 600 million doses annually -- a capacity that Hudson said he aims to double.

Governments around the world are launching funding drives and research efforts, including the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed,” which resembles a program at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Health advocates have warned that the race could leave out countries that can’t afford protective doses, making them vulnerable to mass fatalities and economic wreckage from new waves of the coronavirus.

“I’ve been campaigning in Europe to say the U.S. will get vaccines first,” Hudson said via a video link from his home in Paris. “That’s how it will be because they’ve invested to try and protect their population, to restart their economy.”

While French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spearheaded an $8 billion fund drive to support equitable distribution, others have raised the prospect of a pecking order based on national support for research. Supplies of an experimental shot from the University of Oxford will be prioritized for the U.K. before other parts of the world, according to Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca Plc, which will make the vaccine.

Production of Sanofi’s vaccine in the U.S. will mainly go to that market, while capacity elsewhere will cover Europe and the rest of the world, the company said in an emailed statement following Bloomberg’s report. The drugmaker is having “very constructive conversations” with the French and German governments and European Union institutions, it said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... s-ceo-says

New French study
Abstract
France has been heavily affected by the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and went into lockdown on the 17 March 2020. Using models applied to hospital and death data, we estimate the impact of the lockdown and current population immunity. We find 3.6% of infected individuals are hospitalized and 0.7% die, ranging from 0.001% in those <20 years of age (ya) to 10.1% in those >80ya. Across all ages, men are more likely to be hospitalized, enter intensive care, and die than women. The lockdown reduced the reproductive number from 2.90 to 0.67 (77% reduction). By 11 May 2020, when interventions are scheduled to be eased, we project 2.8 million (range: 1.8–4.7) people, or 4.4% (range: 2.8–7.2) of the population, will have been infected. Population immunity appears insufficient to avoid a second wave if all control measures are released at the end of the lockdown.
Full: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/ ... ce.abc3517

clutchcargo wrote: ↑Fri May 15, 2020 11:25 pm 2 doctors explain why COVID-19 is not 'just another flu' — and why comparing the death tolls leads to inaccurate conclusions

In a report published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medicine Association, Drs. Carlos del Rio and Jeremy Faust suggested that people were incorrectly using the flu-to-coronavirus comparison to downplay the severity and deadliness of COVID-19.

“Public officials continue to draw comparisons between seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2 mortality, often in an attempt to minimise the effects of the unfolding pandemic,” they wrote.

The doctors said comparisons of the two diseases’ death tolls are sometimes based on false assumptions, which makes them unreliable. That’s because the number of deaths from the flu is always an estimation, while the reported number of deaths from the coronavirus is delayed and likely undercounted.

“Although officials may say that SARS-CoV-2 is ‘just another flu,’ this is not true,” del Rio and Faust wrote.

To demonstrate a more apt comparison of flu and coronavirus deaths, del Rio and Faust looked at numbers from “peak weeks” of seasonal flu outbreaks (not estimated numbers) and a week during the coronavirus outbreak. During the week of April 14 to 21, there were 15,455 COVID-19 deaths in the US, while the average number of counted flu deaths during the peak week of influenza seasons from 2013 to 2020 was 752.

That’s more than a twentyfold difference.

Full story: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/flu- ... ort-2020-5

At least 25% of all colds are coronavirus, some of which are the Russian flu:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_flu_pandemic

US and UK 'lead push against global patent pool for Covid-19 drugs'
Efforts to dilute world health assembly resolution on open licensing decried as ‘appalling’
Sarah Boseley Health editor
Last modified on Sun 17 May 2020 20.25 BST

Ministers and officials from every nation will meet via video link on Monday for the annual world health assembly, which is expected to be dominated by efforts to stop rich countries monopolising drugs and future vaccines against Covid-19.

As some countries buy up drugs thought to be useful against the coronavirus, causing global shortages, and the Trump administration does deals with vaccine companies to supply America first, there is dismay among public health experts and campaigners who believe it is vital to pull together to end the pandemic.

While the US and China face off, the EU has taken the lead. The leaders of Italy, France, Germany and Norway, together with the European commission and council, called earlier this month for any innovative tools, therapeutics or vaccines to be shared equally and fairly.

“If we can develop a vaccine that is produced by the world, for the whole world, this will be a unique global public good of the 21st century,” they said in a statement.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... d-19-drugs

^related
There are still concerns if a vaccine is successful, what happened in 2009 could happen again.

The concerns are centred on countries such as the US — a leader in pharmaceutical research — being hit so hard by coronavirus that if one is produced in-country it will not be shared worldwide for months or even years
"The Switzerland-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), founded in 2016 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was established to coordinate the development of new vaccines to prevent and contain infectious disease epidemics.

It is in the midst of negotiations with a range of companies, research arms and state-backed organisations for a coronavirus vaccine."

"And the political games are already taking place. Over the weekend, France's Government summoned the chief executive of French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi for talks, after he suggested the US may have first rights to a pre-order of a vaccine in development, because it had "invested in taking the risk"."

Full:https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-05- ... s/12243580

Doc67 wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 1:46 pm If any country develops a good vaccine it will be copied by the Chinese and Indians in a heartbeat. Most other countries who are not so good at that kind of thing will happily buy it for their own citizens.

Many will likely buy from the Chinese. Results will be hit and miss.

Taken from the link above ^ - let's hope that this guy is right and the vaccine will be shared. This is a global pandemic and it needs a global response.

Dr Basser, now senior vice-president of CSL vaccine arm Seqirus, said in the 11 years since swine flu the research community had woken up.

And although there were still many uncertainties, he said the response to the COVID-19 threat so far had shown its development over the past decade.

"This is not about a commercial return," he said.

"This is about overcoming a threat to everybody. And that we could share appropriately if only one or two vaccines were successful.

"And given the way the global vaccine ecosystem has behaved up until now, I am cautiously optimistic we'll find a solution."

Also, before we get too excited about a vaccine (same source) :

Professor Cunningham said the speed at which companies and researchers were racing towards a vaccine was exciting — but also concerning.
"It generally takes us eight to 18 years to produce a vaccine, the shortest is about four years," he said.