Vaccine in the works

With 47 confirmed cases of the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) in Bahrain, infections and deaths around the world have been rising, leading to several biotech companies and institutional bodies working on vaccines.

Even as the infection rate in China seems to be levelling off, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has upgraded the global risk of the coronavirus outbreak to “very high” – its top level of risk assessment, while saying there was still a chance of containing the virus if its chain of transmission were broken.

All the cases in Bahrain are isolated to those who flew to the kingdom indirectly from Iran, have been quarantined near the airport and as of Monday evening, no cases in the general population have been identified.

At a press conference in Geneva, Dr Tedros said that most cases could still be traced, and there was no evidence of the virus “spreading freely in communities”.

His colleague, Dr Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s Emergency Health Programme, said that the risk level was intended to serve as a “reality check” for governments, since some healthcare systems were still unprepared.

A team of WHO experts landed in Tehran Iran on Monday to support the ongoing response to the virus outbreak in the country.

The team is working with health authorities and other stakeholders to review ongoing readiness and response efforts, visit designated health facilities, laboratories and points of entry, and provide technical guidance.

Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health, has said that a potential vaccine is in rapid development but that a final product is at least a year to 18 months away, if all goes well.

Peter Marks, director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research said that getting a vaccine ready for pivotal testing is going to take more than just a few months, he said.

“I do have to be honest that for the vaccines, the idea that there’s going to be a vaccine that will really be able to be used in a large patient population and a large clinical trial, in the very near future, as in the next few months, I think that’s just not likely,” Marks said.

US biotech firm Moderna has shipped an experimental coronavirus vaccine to US government researchers six weeks after it started working on the immunisation. According to Moderna, the vaccine was developed within 42 days of the company obtaining genetic information on the coronavirus. By comparison, it took researchers about 20 months to start human tests of the vaccine for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), an older coronavirus, according to a journal paper written by Fauci.

Initial trials of the potential vaccine could begin in April, but the process of testing and approvals would last at least a year.

Moderna said in a statement last week that the first batch of its novel coronavirus vaccine, called mRNA-1273, had been sent to NIAID.

Further testing and regulatory approvals would be needed before the vaccine can be deployed widely, in addition to production and logistical challenges.

Vaccines prevent infections and the best way of doing that at the moment is good hygiene. If you are infected, then for most people it would be mild.

l Try and avoid contact with people with fever and cough.

l Regular hand washing with soap and water/alcohol based sanitisers.

l Clean and disinfect frequently used objects and surfaces with recommended disinfectants.

l Cover mouth with tissue while coughing and sneezing. Make sure to dispose tissues properly.

Existing treatments that can be repurposed to fight the Covid-19 virus are being researched by major pharmaceutical companies, as these would not face the same deployment challenges as a vaccine.

The WHO said that remdesivir is showing signs of helping to treat the coronavirus but further testing and monitoring is required before it can be recommended as a viable treatment.

A randomised, controlled clinical trial to evaluate its safety and efficacy in hospitalised adults diagnosed with Covid-19 has begun at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha.

As of the March 1 daily situation report by the WHO, 87,137 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed globally of which 7,169 are outside China, with 2,873 deaths in China and 104 deaths in other countries.