Keenly-watched COVID-19 vaccine 'won't be expensive', developer says

By Kate Kelland

 

Vial 1 of Box 1. This is the vaccine candidate to be used in Phase 1 clinical trial at the Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility (CBF) in Oxford, Britain, April 2, 2020. Sean Elias/Handout via REUTERS

 

LONDON (Reuters) - A keenly-watched COVID-19 vaccine will be priced to allow as wide as possible access to it, if it proves successful, and will be made at huge scale to keep costs down and supply up, said the Oxford University professor co-leading its development.

 

Adrian Hill, director of Oxford's Jenner Institute, which has teamed up with the drugmaker AstraZeneca to develop the vaccine, said ensuring wide distribution and low cost have been central to the project from the start.

 

"This not going to be an expensive vaccine," Hill told Reuters in an interview. "It's going to be a single dose vaccine. It's going to be made for global supply and it's going to be made in many different locations. That was always our plan."

 

The experimental vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is one of the front runners in the global race to provide protection against the new coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Preliminary data from a small trial of the experimental vaccine in six monkeys found that some of the animals given a single shot developed antibodies against the virus within 14 days, and all developed protective antibodies within 28 days.

 

When the monkeys were exposed to the new coronavirus, the vaccine appeared to prevent damage to the lungs and kept the virus from making copies of itself there, although it was still actively replicating in the nose.

 

Hill said the data from the animal tests were "encouraging of course" and reinforced his team's high degree of confidence that ongoing human trials of the shot will also show positive results. The first signals on whether and how well it works could come as early as July or August.

 

Hill's team began early-stage human trials of the vaccine in April, making it one of only a handful to have reached that milestone.

 

Hill said that as of this week, more than 1,000 people have been dosed in the trial - with around half getting the experimental vaccine and the other half serving as a control group.

 

Asked about the progress of the human trials, Hill said he and his team "are not going to give a running commentary" but added: "You can conclude that if the trial is still running - as it certainly is - that would mean there have been no major upsets."

 

Almost 4.5 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and more than 301,000 have died, according to a Reuters tally.

 

Health and disease experts say a vaccine that protects people from the new coronavirus could help end the pandemic, but finding one that works and manufacturing enough doses is a huge challenge.

 

The ChAdOx vaccine, a type known as a recombinant viral vector vaccine, uses a weakened version of the common-cold virus spiked with proteins from the novel coronavirus to generate a response from the body's immune system.

 

Other vaccines in human trials include those by Moderna Inc, Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE and China's CanSino Biologics Inc.

 

Hill told Reuters the ChAdOx1 project has at least seven manufacturing sites around the world. Those include India's Serum Institute as well as sites in Europe and China.

 

Hill has said that up to a million doses of the shot are already being manufactured and will be available by September, even before trials fully prove whether it works.

 

"The ambition is shared to get a low-priced, very, very extensively available vaccine as soon as possible," Hill said. "And one of the reasons that we chose Astrazeneca was because they shared that ambition and they were convincing that they could provide supply and large scale."

 

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Peter Graff)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-05-16

 

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Good I wish you rapid success 

Won't be expensive ..... or available in less than a year ..... or fully effective ..... or widely used due to Bronze Age religious resistance and tinfoil hat-wearers ..... or a way to eradicate COVID seeing as how only one disease has ever been eradicated by a vaccine - and since when has Reuters taken paid advertorials?

The only certainty in this is that Astrazeneca shares went up considerably over the past few weeks.

1 hour ago, Kinnock said:

Won't be expensive ..... or available in less than a year ..... or fully effective ..... or widely used due to Bronze Age religious resistance and tinfoil hat-wearers ..... or a way to eradicate COVID seeing as how only one disease has ever been eradicated by a vaccine - and since when has Reuters taken paid advertorials?

What disease was eradicated by a vaccine?

1 minute ago, Heppinger said:

What disease was eradicated by a vaccine?

Smallpox in 1980.

 

Vaccine for smallpox developed in 1796 .... so took a while 

1 hour ago, Kinnock said:

Won't be expensive ..... or available in less than a year ..... or fully effective ..... or widely used due to Bronze Age religious resistance and tinfoil hat-wearers ..... or a way to eradicate COVID seeing as how only one disease has ever been eradicated by a vaccine - and since when has Reuters taken paid advertorials?

Its not a paid advertorial its a report by Kate Kelland a journalist for Reuters

2 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

Its not a paid advertorial its a report by Kate Kelland a journalist for Reuters

Are you really that naive, or this an example of highly sophisticated sarcasm?

4 minutes ago, Kinnock said:

Are you really that naive, or this an example of highly sophisticated sarcasm?

Just pointing out a fact sorry, I'm not onboard with your false statement that this was a paid for piece

Edited May 16, 20206 yr by Bkk Brian

Reported conspiracy nonsense removed.

When the SARS vaccine was being developed it stumbled at this stage because the animals developed "immune-enhanced disease" which is when the vaccine triggers a worse response than the disease itself.

 

So I've got a glimmer of hope for this vaccine, it sounds promising but so many tests to still overcome. There's 500 people in the UK with it in their systems right now so it won't be long before we have further results.

4 hours ago, Bkk Brian said:

Its not a paid advertorial its a report by Kate Kelland a journalist for Reuters

Indeed. And a report on a non-profit and well respected institute.

 

Unfortunately they may not be able to control what price manufacturers charge.  That it will mot be expensive to make does not preclude price gouging especially in the US where one can be sure varied monied interests can and will have a hand in things.

 

 

5 hours ago, Heppinger said:

What disease was eradicated by a vaccine?

Aids has been around for 35 years without a vaccine and herpes 50 years. Now big pharma is going to pull one out of their asses in less than a year? Anyone for more Kool-Aid?

Edited May 16, 20206 yr by 1duckyboy

2 hours ago, 1duckyboy said:

Aids has been around for 35 years without a vaccine and herpes 50 years. Now big pharma is going to pull one out of their asses in less than a year? Anyone for more Kool-Aid?

 

1. The Institute referred to in the article is not "Big Pharma" (though they are also scrambling to find a vaccine).

 

2. Hardly has to he pulled out of thin air. They were already far along on a vaccine for SARS and had already developed a technology applicable to this virus.

 

 

Just now, Sheryl said:

 

1. The non-profit Institute referred to in the article is not "Big Pharma" (though the private companies are indeed t also scrambling to find a vaccine).

 

2. Hardly has to he pulled out of thin air. They were already far along on a vaccine for SARS and had already developed a technology applicable to this virus.

 

 

 

Anyone for a cold shower?

It seems that a shortage of pruducts which are critical for storing the vaccine is expected, in particular of vials.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/11/coronavirus-vaccine-supply-shortages-245450

9 hours ago, Kinnock said:

Smallpox in 1980.

 

Vaccine for smallpox developed in 1796 .... so took a while 

Polio is getting close.

 

9 hours ago, Heppinger said:

What disease was eradicated by a vaccine?

Smallpox?

1 hour ago, anterian said:

Polio is getting close.

 

Yes, true - but that vaccine was first introduced in 1955, so it's not a quick process, and the last two countries are Afghanistan and Pakistan, which highlights my point about Bronze Age beliefs being one barrier.

14 hours ago, Kinnock said:

Won't be expensive ..... or available in less than a year ..... or fully effective ..... or widely used due to Bronze Age religious resistance and tinfoil hat-wearers ..... or a way to eradicate COVID seeing as how only one disease has ever been eradicated by a vaccine - and since when has Reuters taken paid advertorials?

Spot on. And who's to say what's "expensive" or not? Even worse.... the precedent has been set. Need to make a few billion. Let some virus spread *by accident* then ride on on the big white horse to save us all with a vaccine. And just look at all the sheeple getting in line as ordered.

5 minutes ago, Crazy Alex said:

 then ride on on the big white horse to save us all with a vaccine. And just look at all the sheeple getting in line as ordered.

You should have said Pale horse ????

1 minute ago, Heppinger said:

You should have said Pale horse ????

 

Actually LOLing here. Nicely done!

2 minutes ago, Crazy Alex said:

 

Actually LOLing here. Nicely done!

Can you edit your post just for me? Don't want all that time spent in Sunday School to go to waste ????

38 minutes ago, Crazy Alex said:

Spot on. And who's to say what's "expensive" or not? Even worse.... the precedent has been set. Need to make a few billion. Let some virus spread *by accident* then ride on on the big white horse to save us all with a vaccine. And just look at all the sheeple getting in line as ordered.

Both partners have agreed to operate on a not-for-profit basis for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, with only the costs of production and distribution being covered. 

 

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-04-30-landmark-partnership-announced-development-covid-19-vaccine

 

Of course some people will still get on their high horse and demand it is free or they operate at a loss

12 hours ago, Bkk Brian said:

When the SARS vaccine was being developed it stumbled at this stage because the animals developed "immune-enhanced disease" which is when the vaccine triggers a worse response than the disease itself.

 

So I've got a glimmer of hope for this vaccine, it sounds promising but so many tests to still overcome. There's 500 people in the UK with it in their systems right now so it won't be long before we have further results.

There were at least a dozen candidate vaccines for SARS. Only two of them had a problem with a vaccine-induced inflammatory response in animal studies, one in mice and one in ferrets. The majority of the SARS candidate vaccines did not have that problem and even in the two that did, the groups developing them said these issues were not critical could potentially have been overcome with further development. Since SARS dissipated all by itself however, there was not enough money or interest for the continuation of vaccine development.

 

If we take another example of a similar coronavirus (MERS), vaccine development has continued successfully and the most advanced one (from the same Oxford University Vaccine Group as mentioned in this thread) has come through all its pre-clinical and animal trials without any problems and is now in phase 1 human trials in Saudi Arabia. So far in the human trials things are apparently going well.

 

In fact it's partly because of the ongoing promising signs of their MERS vaccine that the Oxford group is so confident about their SARS-Cov-2 candidate vaccine which is based on the same exact technology.

4 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

Both partners have agreed to operate on a not-for-profit basis

The Catholic Church is not-for-profit, reportedly worth 30 billion.

 

NFP, ok ok.  You have a salary of 10 billion?  no problem.  we have to pay salaries to keep our company "up and running".  don't worry, we are not-for-profit.  ok ok  

 

 

Just now, Ventenio said:

The Catholic Church is not-for-profit, reportedly worth 30 billion.

 

NFP, ok ok.  You have a salary of 10 billion?  no problem.  we have to pay salaries to keep our company "up and running".  don't worry, we are not-for-profit.  ok ok  

 

 

Jesus.................

6 minutes ago, Ventenio said:

The Catholic Church is not-for-profit, reportedly worth 30 billion.

 

NFP, ok ok.  You have a salary of 10 billion?  no problem.  we have to pay salaries to keep our company "up and running".  don't worry, we are not-for-profit.  ok ok  

 

 

Of course "non-profit" is a scam. I could form a "non-profit" and give myself a million dollar salary. It's amazing so many people are fooled by this.

16 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

Both partners have agreed to operate on a not-for-profit basis for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, with only the costs of production and distribution being covered. 

 

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-04-30-landmark-partnership-announced-development-covid-19-vaccine

 

Of course some people will still get on their high horse and demand it is free or they operate at a loss

I don't demand anyone do anything for free or at a loss. That sounds more like a leftist thing. And I'll believe the "non-profit" claim when I see it. Anyone can say they're going to do anything.

42 minutes ago, Heppinger said:

Can you edit your post just for me? Don't want all that time spent in Sunday School to go to waste ????

Dammit I shoulda.... now it won't let me. My bad.