Why the World Will Look To India For a Coronavirus Vaccine (bbc.com) 102
America and India "have run an internationally recognized joint vaccine development program for more than three decades," writes long-time Slashdot reader retroworks. And today the BBC reported the two countries are now working together on vaccines against the new coronavirus:
India is among the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines in the world. It is home to half a dozen major vaccine makers and a host of smaller ones, making doses against polio, meningitis, pneumonia, rotavirus, BCG, measles, mumps and rubella, among other diseases. Now half a dozen Indian firms are developing vaccines against the virus that causes Covid-19.
One of them is Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine maker by number of doses produced and sold globally... Now the firm has stitched up collaboration with Codagenix, an American biotech company, to develop a "live attenuated" vaccine, among the more than 80 reportedly in development all over the world... "We are planning a set of animal trials [on mice and primates] of this vaccine in April. By September, we should be able to begin human trials," Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer of Serum Institute of India, told me over the phone. Mr Poonawalla's firm has also partnered to mass produce a vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and backed by the UK government...
"It's pretty clear the world is going to need hundreds of millions of doses, ideally by the end of this year, to end this pandemic, to lead us out of lockdown," Prof Adrian Hill, who runs the Jenner Institute at Oxford, told the BBC's Health and Science correspondent James Gallagher. This is where Indian vaccine makers have a head start over others. Mr Poonawalla's firm alone has an extra capacity of 400 to 500 million doses. "We have lots of capacity as we have invested in it," he says.
There's more. Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech had announced a partnership with the University of Wisconsin Madison and US-based firm FluGen to make almost 300 million doses of a vaccine for global distribution. Zydus Cadilla is working on two vaccines, while Biological E, Indian Immunologicals, and Mynvax are developing a vaccine each. Another four or five home-grown vaccines are in early stages of development.
In the article the World Health Organization's chief scientist also applauds "the entrepreneurs and pharmaceutical companies who invested in quality manufacturing and in processes that made it possible to produce in bulk.
"The owners of these companies have also had the goal of doing good for the world, while also running a successful business and this model is a win-win for all."
One of them is Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine maker by number of doses produced and sold globally... Now the firm has stitched up collaboration with Codagenix, an American biotech company, to develop a "live attenuated" vaccine, among the more than 80 reportedly in development all over the world... "We are planning a set of animal trials [on mice and primates] of this vaccine in April. By September, we should be able to begin human trials," Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer of Serum Institute of India, told me over the phone. Mr Poonawalla's firm has also partnered to mass produce a vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and backed by the UK government...
"It's pretty clear the world is going to need hundreds of millions of doses, ideally by the end of this year, to end this pandemic, to lead us out of lockdown," Prof Adrian Hill, who runs the Jenner Institute at Oxford, told the BBC's Health and Science correspondent James Gallagher. This is where Indian vaccine makers have a head start over others. Mr Poonawalla's firm alone has an extra capacity of 400 to 500 million doses. "We have lots of capacity as we have invested in it," he says.
There's more. Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech had announced a partnership with the University of Wisconsin Madison and US-based firm FluGen to make almost 300 million doses of a vaccine for global distribution. Zydus Cadilla is working on two vaccines, while Biological E, Indian Immunologicals, and Mynvax are developing a vaccine each. Another four or five home-grown vaccines are in early stages of development.
In the article the World Health Organization's chief scientist also applauds "the entrepreneurs and pharmaceutical companies who invested in quality manufacturing and in processes that made it possible to produce in bulk.
"The owners of these companies have also had the goal of doing good for the world, while also running a successful business and this model is a win-win for all."
But, but (Score:1, Troll)
What about all the news stories that you can get the virus twice? So why would a vaccine work? So either the people trying to make a vaccines are wrong, or the people saying that antibodies don't stop the disease are wrong (and maybe just want to keep the scare going)... (sorry if there is some vaccination method that doesn't rely on antibodies, but that's how most work and seems anything else would be a treatment, not a vaccine)
Re:But, but (Score:4, Interesting)
There are no news stories that you can get the virus twice. There is only the WHO statement that says the evidence is not enough to confirm reinfection probability is low enough to warrant a country issuing "certificates of health" to people who have recovered from the virus.
And it is very easy to understand why WHO will come out with such a statement - they are just covering their asses because of the barrage of accusations of "complicity" to "spread the virus" and such that was leveled at them by a few irresponsible "free world leaders" who fucked up their response to the sars-cov-2 and are in a desperate search for parties to offload the blame to.
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There are no news stories that you can get the virus twice.
It's true that the WHO story is about the absence of evidence for immunity rather than the evidence of absence. Actually, however, there have been a few news stories about people getting the virus twice [cnn.com] (also at least one from China). Currently the discoveries of this have been at a low enough level that it's assumed that these were mistakes. Either false positives for antibodies or too early release from treatment.
There's also some specific cases where viral material has been found in eyes many days af
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The stories are about people appearing to get the virus twice. But there is enough uncertainty in all reported "reinfection" cases to put serious doubt about their validity.
Given that there are hundreds of thousands of recoveries and that the "reinfected" stories are from the beginning of the pandemic in February, it isn't very likely that reinfection occurs at any significant rate, if at all.
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I am not wrong, you're a stupid Trumptard fuck. Go inject yourself with some bleach and shove a mercury vapor lamp where sun don't shine.
Re: But, but (Score:1)
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You used the wrong alt to reply, stupid troll. You're not (only) wrong, you're also stupid.
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I can catch more than one cold in my lifetime, I can get the flu more than once, why would coronavirus be any different?
Re:But, but (Score:5, Interesting)
I can catch more than one cold in my lifetime, I can get the flu more than once, why would coronavirus be any different?
Because there are many strains of flu. There are many more things that cause colds.
Also the 'immunity' for those types of virus aren't permanent.
covid19 would be different in that it's only 1 strain so far as we know.
(Yes I know it mutates [nextstrain.org] but as far as I'm aware they are still similar enough to be counted as 1 strain for the immune system to deal with.)
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"so far as we know"
That's the tricky part.
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"covid19 would be different in that it's only 1 strain so far as we know"
Last I looked this up the literature said we know that there are at least eight strains
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"covid19 would be different in that it's only 1 strain so far as we know"
Last I looked this up the literature said we know that there are at least eight strains
Depends how they count strains maybe? How different do they need to be?
There are way more than 8 different 'versions' [nextstrain.org]
It would have been more interesting if you had linked to the information
Does this mean there are currently 12 strains [nextstrain.org]? Is there any research to show they are any different in practical terms? Genuinely interested if you had a link. What I've read so far says they are basically 'the same'.
Re: But, but (Score:1)
Rhinovirus (which causes most colds) mutates hundreds of times faster than known caronavirus such as Covid or SARS.
If a really, really nasty rhinovirus ever jumps species to humans and is as contagious as covid then we are royally screwed.
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It's ironic - because the reason the WHO fucked up, and then were later blamed by irresponsible leaders (and irresponsible internet trolls? (myself?)) - was because they weren't willing to commit to statements without 100% proof, not because of trying to proactively get the right information out, but saying the wrong thing because they tried to get the information out too early.
"We don't *know* shutting down travel will help, so we're saying you shouldn't"
"It's spreading in the community, but we don't know
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Re:But, but (Score:5, Interesting)
There are no news stories that say you can get the virus twice. If you somebody said that, you weren't watching news.
What has been reported is that people have tested positive and then negative and then positive again. The tests can have both false positives and false negatives, so this is expected, and does not imply you can get it more than once. Maybe you can, but that is not yet known and there is no evidence of it now. Recovery from infection with a coronavirus typically does leave the subject with temporary immunity, so there is every reason to believe a vaccine is possible.
As for the headline, people will "look to" whoever has a working vaccine. What a load of hooey.
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Right [yahoo.com] here [france24.com]. And it is from Europe and WHO — not the Lysol-drinking nincompoops from the White House — so it must be true:
and
Now, of course, these articles are full of unscientific
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Re:But, but (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually suspect this might be a little more complicated than that.
Theres multiple different antibody tests and all seem to produce different epidemiologies , most of which dont seem to line up with evidence from the vastly more reliable RT-PCR tests. In essence I don't think the evidence supports the notion that theres lots of people out there who had the virus asymptomatically and then recovered. Following from that the observation that many of these supposed asymptomatic antibody carriers still get the disease would seem suspicious too.
Needless to say however that what IS known about coronaviruses is that antibody resiistance only lasts a few years , so when a vaccine does emerge, we are probably going to need to recieve it every year, even twice a year for a few years until we are confident we've killed this stupid thing of.
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Indeed. They could for example, add it to the seasonal flu vaccine and nicely get everybody that is in a risk group and at least somewhat smart.
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What’s no to like, It would cull the anti-vaxxers a bit too, win-win.
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What’s no to like, It would cull the anti-vaxxers a bit too, win-win.
Naa, not deadly enough. Also, while I share the sentiment, anything making evolution harsh enough to do something about abysmal stupidity would hit a lot of innocent bystanders as well.
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People who can't afford health insurance don't get the flu vaccine for free.
We should make sure that everyone gets the Covid vaccine for free.
That means your plan would require either making sure everyone can get the flu vaccine for free.
Some people also can't take the flu vaccine, and sometimes the flu vaccine is worthless because they target the wrong strains of flu.
It would be smarter just to give the Covid vaccine away separately.
Truth = Troll on slashdot (Score:2)
Point to the part you thought was not factual and I will provide a link to a citation.
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Good points. Although I was thinking more long-term. At this time vaccination should most definitely be free for everybody.
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What about all the news stories that you can get the virus twice? So why would a vaccine work? So either the people trying to make a vaccines are wrong, or the people saying that antibodies don't stop the disease are wrong (and maybe just want to keep the scare going)... (sorry if there is some vaccination method that doesn't rely on antibodies, but that's how most work and seems anything else would be a treatment, not a vaccine)
Actually, the real experts say "we do not know yet". You should not get your information from the rumor mill you are using at the moment.
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Not making a decision is also a decision.
"Real" experts provide an actionable opinion based on all the available data. And sometimes they will be wrong as all the data is not in.
Ass covering bureacrats say "We dont know"
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What about all the news stories that you can get the virus twice?
Covid-19 immunity is right there in the incidence numbers. If significant numbers of people were being infected twice, all of these curves would be exponential without limit.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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If the CAIC (Colorado Avalanche Information Center) posted shit like "there's not avalanche risk because we're not sure, yet", or "there's no risk to you currently because you're not on the mountain, yet" - they would be laughed / sued off the face of the earth.
The point of experts is not to report the facts after we're 100% sure (that's what wikipedia is for) - it's to use expert knowledge and information to predict what will happen going forward so us peons can plan accordingly and try to not get caught i
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I've noticed a funny thing about those news stories. You don't expect a news reporter today be be scientifically or mathematically literate, but it's surprising that they don't seem to understand the hyper-cautiously qualified language that scientists are trained to use.
When a scientist says "there is no evidence patients who recover from COVID-19 have resistance," that's exactly what he means ... and *no more*. It means absence of evidence, not evidence to the contrary.
Maybe it's the competitive nature o
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That's what happened when the industry changed from "the press" to "the corporate media". Once upon a time any major newspaper would have a 'science reporter', a journalist who had some actual background in science and the intellectual ability to ask for clarification when they didn't understand something. They've all been retired in favor of stenographers and paparazzi for the sake of profits over all other considerations.
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http://phdcomics.com/comics/ar... [phdcomics.com]
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The evidence that one can get the virus twice within a short period of time (say 25 days) is equivocal. It seems plausible that the real answer is that the virus was only suppressed rather than eliminated, and resurfaced when the immune system weakened slightly.
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Uhm ... maybe (Score:1)
So was this article intended to make all the people who hate H1b feel bad or was it intended to make them go off or maybe it was intended to make Americans feel bad about not letting in even more from India? I don't see a legitimate reason for this one. It's pretty much a nothing ar
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Re:Uhm ... maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
There are at least 150 different vaccines being worked on globally right now. I don't have a per country break down but I doubt they're all/mostly happening in India. This assumes it is even possible to make a vaccine for it.
I think you've missed the point of the article. So you've designed a vaccine (let's say outside of India) and proved it works. Now you need a couple of billion doses. Where do you look for that kind of manufacturing capacity? Well, you start with organizations or companies that already produce billions of doses of vaccines per year. And *that* leads you to India.
As for the possibility of a vaccine, well, you can't prove a negative but there's absolutely no evidence that suggests a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is impossible or even especially difficult.
Posted by India department (Score:1)
There are two countries listed in that article. Why out of the blue it becomes India centric?
We definitely need vaccine developed in a country, where quarantine is enforced by policemen hitting people with a stick on camera.
Re:Posted by India department (Score:5, Insightful)
The middle class in India is small relative to the whole population: 40 million out of 1.4 billion. But if that middle class were it's own country, it'd have a larger population than Canada.
India is so huge and diverse, you can't wrap your brain around it. Contradictory pictures of what India is like can all have bases in fact. It's a shithole country where people live in abject misery, also an entrepreneurial economy where merchant hustle builds new fortunes, and a place where aristocrats live like princes on inherited wealth.
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H1-B holders only work in the US, these vaccines are being developed and manufactured in India. Or are you of the opinion that in order to work in India you need an H1-B visa from the US?
Damn I hate stupid people.
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This looks more like an CIS shill post. Encourage Indians to go back by showing the cool work being done in India while US is drinking bleach and swallowing light bulbs for UV.
Amazing (Score:2)
It's truly amazing that the whole world is working toward a vaccine and hoping to have one ready in the span of a year or less.
I wonder why, then, we are still fighting diseases for which we've had vaccines for decades...
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Because general vaccine availability isn't quite the same as the availability of a proper worldwide vaccination campaign.
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I wonder why, then, we are still fighting diseases for which we've had vaccines for decades...
A vaccination is just training your immune system, it can still be outnumbered and outgunned, tricked and subverted. If the threat is ongoing like for example tetanus you have no choice but to fight it off when attacked. The reason people are looking to a vaccine in this case is that 80% get by with mild symptoms, meaning we already have a semi-functional response that we need to strengthen. If most people's immune system was completely bamboozled we'd have to look at other methods.
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In the case of polio it's because the CIA is known to send spies masquerading as vaccine workers to the Islamic countries (really)
My money is on Germany (Score:2, Insightful)
NOT India
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yes but does any western company have the capacity to produce 6 billion doses in a short time once the vaccine is ready to be manufactured?
Does any western company have the *incentive* to produce 6 billion doses in a short time?
It would make much more business sense (read: PROFIT) to keep the virus going for years and keep selling the vaccine to every new born baby every year.
Only nationalized health care systems have the incentive to vaccinate the entire population asap.
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a) Depends
b) Why would it need to be produced in a single country?
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c) Why would we only produce one type of vaccine?
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Indeed.
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> yes but does any western company have the capacity to produce 6 billion doses in a short time once the vaccine is ready to be manufactured?
"once the vaccine is ready". Stop spreading bullshit. Your country is at the moment fighting covid-19 same way as China does. With three people on the shift updating numbers in Excel and making sure that reported numbers look reasonable. But since they failed elementary school in statistics and geographics, they don't know how many people live in India and how that
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you might be right but how does the numbers concern you.. Aren't you busy burying the 1000's that are dying in your contry unlike in India...
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Germany can make enough for their 80-something million people. The US, too, could take care of its own 350 million — though it might be cheaper to pay the Indians to manufacture it instead.
At any rate, the trick will be in creating the vaccine. With manufacturing being a solved problem, it is the design — be it a stylish T-shirt [vox.com], a cellular phone [mashable.com], other inventions [businessinsider.com] or a vaccine — that's still difficult.
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Germany can make enough for their 80-something million people. The US, too, could take care of its own 350 million —
I wonder whether there's any data supporting this belief. Do you know where your flu vaccine is actually manufactured? I know that Sanofi got a contract last year to boost US-made flu vaccine supplies by a 100 million in case of a pandemic, but it'll be 2025 before that facility comes on line.
I wouldn't count the manufacturing problem as "solved" until we actually have a design for them to build. I suspect there will be a mad scramble for manufacturing bandwidth when the first vaccine gets approved.
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I don't think so.
From what I know, we don't have the capacity to large scale manufacturing of vaccines. Research - sure, but not mass production. India, on the other hand, is a seriously huge player when it comes to mass manufacturing pharmaceuticals.
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I hope ALL the countries are working together to fight this damn COVID-19/2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2! We're all humans.
Editors and journalists take note. (Score:2)
"the new coronavirus"
There is not enough context to say "new" or "novel" virus in most places. You must provide that context by saying somewhere, near the top preferably, something like "the virus that causes Covid-19".
If I talk to people who say "the hurricane", I can guess which one based on their location, and the story should reflect geographical and temporal location. People will say things like "when the hurricane hit" and you need to be certain the readers understand which one and where.
In a similar
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Right, because I had *absolutely no idea* which coronavirus he was talking about.
I guess "Grammar Nazi" is an Essential Business, you never shut down.
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Can I stop injecting bleach now?
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If you MUST be an anally pedantic, you should at least be using the proper virus name, which isn't "covid-19", but sars-cov-2. COVID-19 is the name of the disease that the sars-cov-2 is causing, and it is an abbreviation from "Coronavirus disease 2019".
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And age. Young people on the gulf coast might refer to Katrina as "the hurricane", older people might remember Camille as "the hurricane".
Isn't the reason India is (Score:4, Informative)
"among the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines in the world. " is that for decades India decided the whole Patents on Medicines was a recommendation, not a law.
"India is home to a thriving generics industry, whose copycat drugs make up about 90% of the market."
Now don't get me wrong, I never lose any sleep about countries ignoring Patents that Pharmaceutical companies hold. But there is a reason there are so many companies making drugs and such in India.
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Though America was ignoring British patents for a while, I don't think, we've grown because of it. Could you post evidence to support your claim?
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The cases of Slater and Lowell [interestin...eering.com] are the best documented (and there's the additional detail in this story [newyorker.com] that the British got their textile industry start by stealing technology from the Italians, taking the chain back one more step).
I'm not sure if anyone has proven that it contributed to American economic growth, but it's hard to imagine the American economy growing at the pace it did in the early Industrial Revolution without it becoming a textile manufacturing power. Everybody at the time seemed to th
get the fuck out of Kashmir (Score:2)
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Okay no vaccine for Kashmir. Deal?
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While I hope there is a vaccine.... (Score:1)
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Re:While I hope there is a vaccine.... (Score:4, Informative)
The common cold is more of a syndrome than a disease; it is caused by a vast array of unrelated viruses. There are over 200 known common cold virus lineages, mostly rhinovirues but also coronaviruses and even some influenza viruses.
If all we needed was a vaccine for a single, recently emerged viral strain, the common cold would have been eradicated years ago. Even measles, which is believed to have emerged from a common ancestor 1500 years ago, is easily controlled with a single vaccine.
Time to availability has a lot to do with FDA (Score:1)
This situation is excruciatingly tricky. How stringent is drug testing in India? Can/will the FDA say "Sorry, not for use here."? Where's the tradeoff around the risk of another thalidomide situation, or worse? Another hydroxychloroquinone debate? I'm not qualified to answer, and I doubt that ANY of the /. readership is. But it could well turn out to be one hell of a rock/hardplace situation.
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Can/will the FDA say "Sorry, not for use here."?
Only if Modi pisses off Greatest and Most Stupendous Leader For Life Trump. Then it won't matter how many Americans die, his dittoheads will happily march to the grave in support. Hmm, does anyone know where I can get a copy of Modi's signature?