Even though the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, researchers’ attention is now turning towards devising new and better ways to fight any new variants of COVID-19 that might evolve. They are also trying to find methods of preventing future emerging viruses developing into completely new epidemics and pandemics.
At the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland U.S.A., scientists have been working on developing a universal vaccine against new variants of COVID-19. The new multi-variant vaccine is currently undergoing the first phase of human trials.
This universal vaccine includes multiple coronavirus fragments that could trigger immune responses to different strains of COVID-19, with the hopes of boosting immunity against more variants. It would also be stable at room temperature, potentially making it more globally accessible.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has launched a new Pandemic Preparedness Plan to better defend against new viruses that might cause the next pandemic.
As part of this plan, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will focus research efforts on two areas, 'prototype pathogens' and 'priority pathogens'.
By expanding knowledge of these types of viruses, the Pandemic Preparedness Plan aims to shorten the time it takes to develop medicines or vaccines effective against future variants that may emerge.
But in the search for methods to halt pandemics before they start, many public health professionals agree that national efforts to head off future pandemics is inadequate. Global problems require global solutions.
It is clear that the world does not yet have the political structures nor organisational capability to efficiently monitor and identify new global health threats as they emerge. There will undoubtedly be new pathogens emerging capable of developing into a global pandemic; our modern lifestyle makes such events extremely likely.
Global population growth, climate change, intensive farming (deforestation), increasing demand for meat consumption, the growing wildlife trade, greater personal mobility and easily available international travel, enable new diseases to emerge and spread across the world faster than ever before.
The initial global response to the arrival of COVID-19 was poor, uncoordinated and, sometimes, a point of dispute between nations. In a few countries, the response was distorted and hijacked for political purposes. With the human cost of COVID exceeding 15 million lives and the economic cost of more than $12.5 trillion, the world cannot make the same mistakes again.
Accordingly, the task facing world leaders now, even as they continue to deal with COVID-19, is to work together to ensure that the world is better prepared for the next pandemic threat.
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has recently published a book entitled: 'How To Prevent A Pandemic'. He argues that what is needed for the future is a supra-national body, 'a global fire department'. Gates suggests a name for this — GERM, the Global Epidemic Response and Mobilisation Team. In fact, we already have the World Health Organization (WHO), which in the 1980s achieved a global reduction of 99.9 per cent in polio cases. But there is no way the WHO alone could provide the 24-hour vigilance Gates requires of GERM or any similar body. The cost to fund such an agency would, he reckons, be $1 billion a year.
The Welcome Trust (a global charity that funds medical research) has a similar proposal to deal with emerging pandemic threats in the future. It suggests: “A new Global Health Threats Council or Board should work with existing groups like the World Health Organization, the Global Fund, Gavi, CEPI (The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) without duplicating their current work or activities. We also need governments to build collective financing mechanisms to transform the world’s ability to prepare for and respond to pandemic threats.”
As the frequent disagreements among the United Nations’ member nations testify, arriving at global agreements between all nations is exceptionally difficult. Nationalistic instincts seem to be at odds with the concept of effective 'global governance'.
But the risk of a newly emerging virus creating a future global pandemic (perhaps far more lethal than COVID-19) is exercising minds. It is possible that even while world leaders are struggling to stop or contain wars, to combat deadly climate change and to reconcile or contain national differences and rivalries, a way might be found to organise and fund an international anti-pandemic organisation of some sort.
In the meantime, the scientific community is itself working on a way to mitigate future threats. One Cambridge University spin-off company in the UK is hoping that genetic sequences of viruses discovered in animal faeces will give vital clues for creating a vaccine to help prevent future pandemics. DIOSynVax, a start-up founded by Jonathan Heeney, a veterinarian-turned-vaccinologist, is working on two vaccines that it believes will outlive the current crop of COVID-19 jabs.
Dr Heeney, who first became interested in coronaviruses when he diagnosed them in cats and cheetahs, says scientists are learning about future threats from the guano-covered floors of bat caves and waste from other animals including civet cats and pangolins (popular meat sources in the wildlife trade).
DIOSynVax uses the genomic sequences of coronaviruses in all species to identify their 'Achilles’ heel'. The scientists then use computational biology tools to locate regions of the virus that cannot change without it killing itself.
The Indian government-backed consortium The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), has invested up to 42 million dollars in DIOSynVax. It is one of several teams that CEPI is backing in a quest for a vaccine that could beat future variants of Sars-Cov-2, and any future virus in the related families of Sars and Mers, known collectively as beta coronaviruses. Other recipients of the charity’s funding include Japan’s NEC corporation. CEPI is now busy raising billions of dollars to fund its plan to cut the time from the discovery of a potential pandemic pathogen to an effective vaccination down to just 100 days.
