Yes, the United Nations developed these goals for humanity, which refer to basic needs: eliminate extreme poverty, provide access to education and health care. The visibility of gradual progress is very low: since 2000, we have cut infant mortality rates in half, for example, but progress is largely invisible to people.
However, this year’s report is quite a contrast. Therefore, routine immunization rates, which we have worked to increase to 84% over the past 25 years, were down 14 percentage points last year. The pandemic has pushed nearly 37 million more people into extreme poverty; Until 2020, that number had decreased every year for two decades². So the call here is to say: end.
Well, the pharmaceutical industry is certainly preparing to play its role. Many of the big companies agree to put their best people on therapies and vaccines, so it is quite spectacular. And that’s why we have six vaccine constructs [vaccine construction methods], each of which could possibly go through an FDA phase III clinical trial and receive an emergency use license early next year. Most likely, at least two, three, or four of them are safe and effective. Then we will face the challenge of increasing manufacturing to a completely unheard of level. The form of cooperation that has never been done before is for a company that did not invent the vaccine to provide its factories so that they can expand that manufacturing. The Serum Institute of India, for example, has agreements with AstraZeneca and Novavax [Maryland-based vaccine manufacturer]. They have 5,000 liter tanks and a huge additional built-in capacity.
So far, when it comes to therapeutics, there is dexamethasone [a steroid hormone first approved by the FDA in 1958], which is the only treatment that has a significant impact. Even [Gilead Sciences antiviral agent] remdesivir, at this time, is still showing pretty modest results. But there are several things that are being tested, including a series of monoclonal antibodies [laboratory-produced proteins that act like human antibodies, directed at specific targets], that are more likely to have quite spectacular results. Some of that data will start to release in the next month or two. The Gates Foundation reserved capacity at a Fujifilm-owned factory to make an antibody product. We have to provide the thing to them sometime in October, so we are fighting. If the antibodies don’t work or if we don’t have the right ones, we’ll lose some of that money. But that’s okay, because the potential impact of having that capacity, which is significant, would allow us to bring it to developing countries without just the rich countries taking all that capacity to use it.
The United States is exemplary in this. We have $ 42 billion a year of funding from NIH that often lays the foundation for research to understand biology, so that product innovation can continue and companies can develop drugs based on that biology. There are all sorts of frictions about what drug prices should be, which is a big and complex issue, but the US system, in terms of creating high paying jobs and leading companies here and making new drugs are available in the US Quickly, it’s working pretty well. .
You mentioned the price of drugs. Can these COVID-19 vaccines and drugs be made cheaply enough that the world can afford them?
I have a regular conversation with CEOs in the pharmaceutical industry. Their response to the pandemic and this great work that people are doing in the pharmaceutical industry has reminded them of many of their capabilities and how they can be of use to the world, rather than seeing the industry as selfish and uncooperative. In the last great, great health crisis that we had, when the HIV epidemic hit, the industry was initially unwilling to set tiered prices. Finally, they did the right thing. And that’s why I think the current commitment of some of these companies to invest resources in vaccine manufacturing and become non-profit organizations is quite valuable.
