백신개발 청신호에 각국 물량 확보전 치열...'백신 국가주의' 우려도 높아져
Global biotech firms are making promising steps in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, and the battle among countries to be first is intensifying.
Richer countries have already started signing deals for potential vaccines, raising concerns that "vaccine nationalism" could mean developing countries go to the back of the queue.
Choi Jeong-yoon reports.
According to the World Health Organization, there are already 23 potential vaccines in human trials, with three of them at the large-scale late stage, or Phase-3 trials to test efficacy.
Those are the BNT162b vaccine collaborated by U.S. firm Pfizer and German BioNtech, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, and the ADZ1222 vaccine developed by Oxford University and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca... all of which have reportedly produced neutralising antibodies or killer T-cells.
As yet, it's uncertain which vaccine will be successful, and many countries are embarking on a strategy akin to spread betting in order to try and secure a successful vaccine as soon as it becomes available.
According to the BBC, the UK government has secured some 230-million doses of vaccine so far and signed deals for a further 90 million doses of vaccines.
Washington has been aggressively stocking vaccines from the start, and has also closed the deal with AstraZeneca for enough vaccines for 300-million people.
Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and France have previously formed a vaccine alliance and signed up for 300 million doses of AstraZeneca’s potential vaccine.
South Korea's SK Bioscience meanwhile will produce AstraZeneca's vaccine at its own vaccine factory... to help the British firm build global supplies of the vaccine, as well as securing a domestic supply for Korea.
The local bio-firm will be the first company given permission to produce vaccine material for phase-3 clinical tests.
However, only a handful of nations can afford to commit major sums of money to such speculative investments, and in a world where narrow nationalistic interests increasingly prevail, that is a worrying prospect.
"How we can have a fair distribution of the vaccine. The vaccine, when it first becomes available, needs to be distributed to those people most at risk, and that means people on the frontline of the pandemic...But that needs to be an agreement between countries, a convention between countries. And the only way that can happen is through countries coming together to agree."
Amid the mounting concerns over vaccine nationalism harming the global fight against coronavirus,...voices are being raised for global cooperation to equally distribute vaccines for public health purposes.
Choi Jeong-yoon, Arirang News.
