With 17 pharmaceutical companies around the world leading the global race to fight the virus and already conducting clinical trials, Europeans raise concerns about whether this rapid development is safe and reliable
BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th September, 2020) With 17 pharmaceutical companies around the world leading the global race to fight the virus and already conducting clinical trials, Europeans raise concerns about whether this rapid development is safe and reliable.
In early September, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that though there were a good number of promising COVID-19 vaccines, it would not endorse them unless they were safe and effective.
"I want to assure the public that the WHO will not endorse a vaccine that is not effective and safe. As far as the anti-vaccine movement is concerned, they can make up stories to fight vaccines, but the record of vaccines used against other diseases shows another reality ... We can promote the success of vaccines against Ebola and smallpox," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference in September, recalling that the WHO and national authorities will be responsible for the evaluation of vaccines.
At the same press briefing, WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that the large-scale global distribution of vaccines against COVID-19 was not expected until mid-2021, as Phase 3 trials of candidate vaccines were not scheduled to finish until the end of the current year.
As the COVID-19 pandemic gains or regains ground in some countries, competition rages to develop a vaccine. In particular, Russian researchers published encouraging results for their vaccine Sputnik V and preparations for the vaccine distribution is accelerating in the United States.
In Europe, the European Commission concluded preliminary discussions with the US pharmaceutical company Moderna on purchasing COVID-19 vaccine candidates. It will buy 80 million doses initially, and another 80 million if the vaccine proves to be efficient and safe.
Moderna is the fifth company with which the European Commission has concluded discussions on an advance purchase agreement, after Sanofi-GSK on July 31, Johnson & Johnson on August 13, CureVac on August 18 and AstraZeneca on August 14.
At the same time, despite EU's efforts to secure vaccine doses in advance, and the WHO's estimates that three in four adults intend to be vaccinated, concerns about their effectiveness and safety continue to mount.
SHOULD VACCINATION BE COMPULSORY?
Australia and the United States have already launched debates on a future compulsory vaccination against COVID-19. The question of whether to impose future vaccination against the virus has been also raised in Europe, but it has not been considered in detail so far.
Last week, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison expressed his opinion that the vaccination should be obligatory, as the pandemic, which was devastating for the world economy, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world. According to the country's health authorities, an estimated 95 percent of the population needs to be immunized to truly eradicate the virus.
In the US, meanwhile, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci expressed the opposite point of view, saying that the authorities cannot oblige, or attempt to force people to get vaccinated. At the same time, the official did not exclude the option of making the vaccination compulsory only for certain groups, such as medical personnel.
Speaking to Sputnik, Marc Van Ranst, a virologist at the KU Leuven university in Belgium, pleaded for maintaining a "limitation of our social contacts until a vaccine is found," as it is unlikely to be available until mid-2021.
"Distancing measures must remain 'useful and proportional' in order to maintain popular support. We can be a little more flexible if the curve drops again, but there will be no vaccine this year. It is too optimistic. There will likely be other waves before a vaccine against the coronavirus is developed." Ranst said.
When asked to comment on the making of COVID-19 vaccination compulsory, Florence Caeymaex, a professor at ULiege university in Belgium and president of the Belgian Bioethics Consultative Committee, told Sputnik that the issue was rather delicate.
"I am not sure I can answer it without a thorough scientific investigation, which weighs the benefits of this vaccine against its costs, that is, potential side effects. This vaccination should not be imposed without having initiated the debate beforehand. We are not on a battlefield with military obligations. We must pursue an ideal of health democracy as an objective and, therefore, try to deliberate collectively on it. Everyone is concerned, so we must include the citizen as much as possible in the debate. Otherwise, support may be difficult to obtain," Caeymaex said.
According to a study published in The Lancet medical journal, 26 percent of French people over 18 years old would refuse to use the vaccine against the virus if it became available, the professor noted.
"Thus, while vaccination played a significant role in the development of our post-war health systems and was the subject of 'a very broad social consensus,' reservations and suspicions about it have since emerged in certain fringes of the public," the specialist added.
Caeymaex went on saying that given the profit requirements to which the pharmaceutical industry is held the question of the dangerousness or at least of the usefulness of certain products sometimes arose.
"This is not about falling into 'Primary' anti-vaccination. For many diseases, such as measles, especially in children, vaccination is an effective public health policy. In the case of COVID-19, the problem would rather be this frantic race for the vaccine. In an emergency context and when there is going to be a lot of money at stake, states will have to be extremely vigilant. On strict adherence to clinical trial procedures, on how vaccines will be marketed. It is going to be a very fierce competition, but profit should never take precedence over the public interest," she noted.
The specialist added that sometimes, scientists could discover potential side effects of a vaccine only after ten years and numerous studies. Within the contest, Caeymaex noted the importance of physical distancing during the time necessary for research.
"We could make the coronavirus vaccine mandatory in certain sectors, such as nursing homes or hospitals, and leave the choice to the rest of the population. In any case, the important thing, in my opinion, is to conduct a differentiated risk assessment according to the audiences. Anyway, masks should be worn until vaccines are available in 2021," the professor concluded.
MEDICAL FIELD EXPERTS ON COVID-19 VACCINES
Jean Ruelle, a researcher at the Medical Microbiology pole of the UCLouvain university in Belgium, said in an interview with Sputnik that COVID-19 vaccines would be widely available by March 2021.
"The working method of the laboratories, which are under pressure, has been different from the usual vaccine developments. They started production at the same time as clinical studies began on samples from thousands of volunteers. We already have interesting data on the effectiveness of about 10 very promising vaccines, but we do not yet have precise data for populations at risk, above all the elderly," Ruelle said.
Speaking about compulsory vaccination, the specialist said that both positions for and against could be defended. According to Ruelle, measles, for example, needs vaccination of 95 percent of the population to ensure general immunity, as one case of measles infects 18 to 20 people. As for COVID-19, only two or three people are at risk of being infected, so it can be gradually eliminated by vaccinating only some 60 or 70 percent of the population.
"There is also the natural immunity acquired by many people, especially young people. It is not yet known whether these people are protected for the long term, or for two years or only six months. We still have a lot to learn, but we are seeing the end of the tunnel," Ruelle added.
Meanwhile, according to professor Jean-Luc Gala, a virologist and the head of the university clinics Saint-Luc in Brussels, the older people get, the less effective vaccination is, regardless of the vaccine.
"The humoral immunity obtained by vaccination of the elderly is poor. They develop fewer antibodies. It is, therefore, the population over 50 [years old] that must be protected as a priority. It is this group that should be vaccinated first, along with the staff of hospitals and nursing homes of course," Gala told Sputnik, adding that for those under 50, vaccination may be optional.
The specialist added that the effectiveness of the vaccination could be improved by "boosting" the vaccine for them or by repeating the inoculation, among other ways to improve the immunization of the elderly.
"I saw that Russian colleagues had promising results with their vaccine, especially in older people, who develop enough antibodies. I have not read the study yet but will do so quickly. It is very encouraging anyway. Russian colleagues are likely to focus on these more fragile population categories in their clinical studies," Gala added.
The specialist also praised the results of those companies that are in clinical phase 3, saying the vaccine development is moving fast.
