“We will see the emergence of improved vaccines well into 2022,” Soumya Swaminathan said.
New Covid-19 vaccines, including vaccines that don’t require needles and can be stored at room temperature, could be ready to use later this year or next year, the World Health Organization’s top scientist said.
Six to eight new immunizations could complete clinical trials and undergo a regulatory review by the end of the year, Soumya Swaminathan, the Geneva-based agency’s chief scientist, said in an interview on Saturday.
New vaccines will be added to the 10 already shown to work within a year of Covid-19 declared a pandemic. The world needs more immunizations, especially as the continuous circulation of the virus is spawning dangerous new variants and drug manufacturers are having a hard time complying with orders. According to data collected by Bloomberg, only 122 countries have started immunizing humans.
“We are very happy with the vaccines we have,” said Swaminathan, an Indian pediatrician best known for her research on tuberculosis and HIV. But “we can improve further,” she said. “I think we’ll see the emergence of improved vaccines well into 2022.”
The current crop of experimental vaccines uses alternative technologies and delivery systems, and includes multiple single inoculations and vaccines administered orally, via a nasal spray and via the skin with some sort of patch. These could, according to Swaminathan, yield immunizations that are more suitable for specific groups, such as pregnant women.
More than 80 vaccine candidates are being studied in humans, although some are still in the early testing phase and may not be successful. Companies with Covid-19 vaccines already in use have also begun testing updated versions designed to thwart variants of the coronavirus that have emerged in recent months.
Booster shots
“We need to continue to support the research and development of more vaccine candidates, especially as the need for continued booster vaccination of populations is still not very clear at this time,” said Swaminathan. “So we have to be prepared for that in the future.”
WHO’s strategic advisory group of immunization experts is looking at whether people infected with SARS-CoV-2 need two doses of vaccine. Some studies show that a natural infection works to boost the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 just like a first dose, eliminating the need for a second injection.
Giving just one dose of vaccine to Covid-19 survivors could release more supplies, Swaminathan said, although it could pose “ practical and logistical challenges in many countries’ ‘if blood tests are required to measure patients’ antibody levels before deciding whether a second shot is warranted.
The introduction of safe and effective vaccines also raises questions about how efficiently and ethically clinical trials can be conducted on experimental vaccines, she said. Placebos will be replaced by a “gold standard” vaccine in a so-called non-inferiority design when it is no longer ethical to use a placebo, Swaminathan said.
Worldwide trial
Meanwhile, one of the approaches WHO is investigating is comparing three or four candidate vaccines at a time to a placebo. A similar study design was used to test the efficacy of drug therapies for Covid-19, and may mean that subjects have an 80% chance of receiving an experimental vaccine and only a 20% chance of receiving a placebo.
“We are now in talks with several vaccine companies in development to see if we can launch something like this on a global pilot platform,” said Swaminathan, adding that she is optimistic that such a study can begin in the first half of 2021.
A global trial involving a wide range of people and countries offers several benefits, she said. Testing vaccines in different ethnicities, age groups, and people with different medical conditions makes the results more generalizable, and when the epidemic abates in some parts of the world, it is often still active in others, she said.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV contributors and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)