Interview Dr. Soumya Swaminathan (WHO)
IF EVERYTHING GOES WELL,
VACCINE WILL BE READY BY EARLY 2021
A CHAT WITH DR. SOUMYA SWAMINATHAN People are anxious to know when wil l the drug/vaccine arrive. Wil l it be within next 6 months or another year?
Dr. Soumya Swaminathan was most recently WHO's Deputy Director-General for Programmes. A paediatrician from India and a globally recognized researcher on tuberculosis and HIV, she brings with her 30 years of experience in clinical care and research and has worked throughout her career to translate research into impactful programmes. Dr. Swaminathan was Secretary to the Government of India for Health Research and Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research from 2015 to 2017. In that position, she focused on bringing science and evidence into health policy making, building research capacity in Indian medical schools and forging south-south partnerships in health sciences. From 2009 to 2011, she also served as Coordinator of the UNICEF/ UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases in Geneva.
20
TECHAGAPPE
OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2020
Normally a vaccine takes about 10 years for development. If we look historically, Ebola vaccine was developed in 5 years, the Zika in less than 2 years, but by that time the Zika problem was over. We are hoping to break that record also and try and develop a vaccine in under 12 months. That will be an astounding achievement if that happens. The only way it can happen is to have a global collaboration, rather than competition. There were over 100 candidates which were in various stages of development two months back. Of these, 7 were in Phase 1 human testing, including two each in China, USA and Germany and one in the UK. India also has a number of candidates in progressing development. Now, we have at least a few candidates which are in phase 2/3 trials. As this will be a new vaccine, safety is foremost and efficacy against COVID infection needs to be proved. If everything goes well, we may have a vaccine early in 2021. Right from the outset of the pandemic, WHO had started planning the R&D needed to promote the development of therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics. As this is a new virus, we need to establish and standardize animal model and assays which will be used for vaccine testing. If everyone set up their own system of testing, they will not be comparable, so it is important to standardize that. We track the development of vaccine candidates and update the knowledge base regularly. We have also set up an expert group that looks at the criteria for prioritizing vaccine. You cannot bring 100 vaccines into phase 3. It can be say 2 to 5 at most – so we have criteria to pick the most promising candidates. We have developed a protocol for a phase 3 vaccine trial which is ongoing now. Similar to the Solidarity trial for drugs, it would be a solidarity trial for vaccines. It would test multiple vaccine candidates against a placebo arm, and enrol in many countries at the same time, thus improving the efficiency and reducing the time needed . We also need to ensure that these vaccines are available to populations everywhere, regardless of their ability to pay. WHO will work with countries and developers to ensure a fair and equitable allocation system. Any prediction based on scientific data about when wil l the curve flatten global ly? There are many hypotheses on why infection rates are low in Africa and India, but there is no clear answer. We see flattening of
