Bill Gates, the Co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has said that part of the solutions to secure Covid-19 vaccines, widely, in developing countries lies in stepping up production.
The billionaire was weighing in on the debate around coronavirus vaccine nationalism during a Pan-Africanist press conference on Tuesday, January 26.
"The key for the vaccines is getting more approved and getting more factories in production,” he said.
Earlier this week, a new study commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Research indicated that the global economy could potentially lose $9.2 trillion if governments fail to ensure developing economies access Covid-19 vaccines.
However, Gates revealed that his foundation has provided direct support to vaccine manufacturers to enable them to produce shots developed by other companies.
These "second source” agreements, he noted, have enabled companies such as the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer, to partner with the Europe-based AstraZeneca to produce the Covid-19 vaccine that was developed by Oxford University.
"We are hopeful that particularly with some factories in India that the foundation has helped to finance, within the next few months a large number of doses will come out of there and be targeted almost entirely to the developing world. That is the goal of Covax,” he added.
The COVAX framework is a global vaccine financing vehicle coordinated by the World Health Organisation and the vaccine alliance Gavi.
Gates expressed optimism that vaccines, combined with better tests and treatments, could soon have an effect on the trajectory of the pandemic.
"There is an end in sight. Through great scientific work many vaccines are becoming available. By sometime next year we will largely be back to normal,” he said.
At least five years needed for local production
According to the Gates Foundation, the global benchmark for constructing a vaccine factory in Africa would take at least five years.
Gates was responding to a question on whether his foundation plans to fund low-income developing countries to develop local Covid-19 vaccines production capacity, mainly due to a lopsided distribution in favor of major economies.
Gates said the global benchmark for constructing a vaccine factory is over five years, adding that new factories in several African countries will be necessary to combat the next pandemic.
Alternative he said, "Developing countries for now should take advantage of the already existing Covid-19 vaccines production efforts, such as the factories in India and Indonesia with huge production capacity.”
He added, "There are a very high-volume of factories in the developing world, primarily in Indonesia and India. Making a new vaccine factory is a more than five-year effort.”
"So, the factories really are there. We can’t get new ones overnight.”
Gates also stated that for as the world prepares for the next pandemic, "The plan for the next round is to globally have lots of mRNA capacity, and to advance that technology so that it’s more scalable, more thermal stable and cheaper, over the next five years, that should be possible if we get the rich countries to make large investments. I’ll certainly be a huge advocate for that.”
Also critical, the philanthropist observed, is the fact that the pandemic has encouraged nations to prioritize investments in Research & Development (R&D) and build new capabilities that don’t yet exist.
"The world needs to double down on investments in R&D and organizations like CEPI that have proven invaluable with Covid-19. We also need to build brand-new capabilities that don’t exist yet.
"Stopping the next pandemic will require spending tens of billions of dollars per year—a big investment, but remember that the Covid-19 pandemic is estimated to cost the world $28 trillion. The world needs to spend billions to save trillions (and prevent millions of deaths). I think of this as the best and most cost-efficient insurance policy the world could buy.”
Need to improve vaccine efficiency
During the meeting, Gates called on manufacturers to step up efforts in improving the efficiency of coronavirus vaccines, especially with the current strains.
He revealed that multiple samples have been conducted in South Africa, a country he described as the leading hotspot of the variant.
"It’s one of three countries right now where it’s pretty clear that the variant is slightly more infectious, and may even be slightly more fatal. What we think is that the vaccines will be only slightly less effective, but within two weeks, the data will be out,” he told The New Times.
"If there is a drop in effectiveness, even by 10%, we’ll still need to use the vaccine because it is still very effective. But then we’ll look at whether we need to add an additional thing to the vaccine so it covers the variants that have emerged, and we get the efficacy level back up closer to 100%.” He added.
According to the tech-guru, his foundation has allocated funds for specifically that.
"It’s definitely bad news that these variants showed up, but we do expect that the vaccines will still have a pretty high level of efficacy, even before we make that new addition.”