As COVID-19 vaccine race heats up, Bangladesh keeps its options open

In a bid to tame the coronavirus, the rich nations have struck deals worth billions of dollars with drugmakers for millions of doses of potential coronavirus vaccines, widely viewed as the only remedy to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. Bangladesh, too, is actively striving to get a hold of the shots.

The government has greenlit the late-stage trial of a Chinese vaccine while efforts are underway to bring another potential candidate from India once it enters mass production. It has also inquired about the vaccine that Russia approved last month.

As a member of a global alliance led by the World Health Organisation, Bangladesh is in line to get a vaccine once it is approved for global distribution.

But the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine candidates are still in question with the results of the trials likely to take months, or even years, to come out. 

“Bangladesh is doing everything necessary to get the vaccine and we are not behind the others,” said Professor Dr ABM Khurshid Alam, director-general of health services.

More than 200 studies across the globe are being conducted in the hopes of developing a COVID-19 vaccine, half a dozen among which are in the final stages of human trials.

The six leading the race are the candidates developed by the University of Oxford and British company AstraZeneca; US firm Moderna; a collaboration between American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech; and China’s CanSino Biological, SinoVac Biotech and SinoPharm.     

Russia’s Gamaleya Institute has become the first to get the nod to produce its vaccine, though its final trials are still ongoing.

Mushtuq Husain, who did his doctoral research at Cambridge University and is currently advising the Bangladesh government’s disease control agency IEDCR on tackling COVID-19, says the country must keep all options open to get the vaccine.

He believes the main priority should have been to encourage the development of a vaccine in the country.

But now the focus should be on participating in the clinical trial process of as many potential vaccines as possible, he told bdnews24.com.

“This is because many of the vaccines won’t be effective. No-one can say now which will be effective. If we participate in the trials, we will be able to quickly find out its effectiveness,” he said. 

COVAX PLAN

The COVAX plan, co-led by GAVI, the WHO and the CEPI Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, aims to deliver two billion doses of effective, approved COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2021.

The vaccine allocation plan will help buy and fairly distribute the shots. It now has a provisional agreement with Japan, Germany, Norway and 70 other nations to procure COVID-19 vaccines through the facility for their populations.

COVAX currently has nine COVID-19 vaccine candidates in its portfolio, employing a range of different technologies and scientific approaches.

Many countries will pay for the vaccines from their public budgets and partner with up to 90 poorer countries, including Bangladesh, supported through voluntary donations to GAVI's COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC).

WHO initially aims to vaccinate 20 percent of these countries’ populations once a vaccine is approved.

Officials at the Directorate General of Health Services said the countries with more than $4,000 per capita income will have to buy a vaccine while those with less than $4,000 per capita income will get specific amounts of doses for free initially.

As per the 20 percent quota, Bangladesh may get 34 million doses at the outset. Doctors and other frontline responders will be vaccinated first.

GAVI will decide later this month whether Bangladesh will get all the doses for free or make a partial payment.

Currently, the government pays 10 percent of the price of vaccines for different diseases while GAVI bears the rest of the costs.   

It will take at least until June or July next year for Bangladesh to get the vaccine, depending on the success of the trials, through GAVI, Health Minister Zahid Maleque told bdnews24.com.

As part of the efforts to get the vaccine before that period, the government is communicating with different countries without prioritising one, he said.

“We will collect the vaccine at the earliest possible time from where we can,” he added.

CHINESE VACCINE

The government approved Phase III trials of a potential vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac at the end of August.

The plan is to initially test the vaccine on doctors, nurses and other health workers.

The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, or icddr,b will conduct the trial on about 4,200 volunteers over 18 months.

The government approval came more than a month after the Bangladesh Medical Research Council had given the go-ahead.

The government cited safety concerns behind the delay. 

Sinovac has completed a mid-stage study (Phase II) in which it said the vaccine candidate appeared to be safe and induced detectable antibody-based immune responses in subjects.

After being directly approached by Sinovac about the human trial of its vaccine, the icddr,b said Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Mugda General Hospital, Mahanagar General Hospital, Kurmitola General Hospital, Kuwait-Bangladesh Friendship Hospital and Holy Family Hospital had been slated to test it.

SERUM INSTITUTE OF INDIA

AstraZeneca has expanded its agreement with Oxford Biomedica to mass-produce its COVID-19 vaccine, the cell therapy firm said on Tuesday.

Trials are at different stages in Britain, Brazil, South Africa, the United States and India, with more planned in Japan and Russia as well.

India's Serum Institute, which has signed deals to mass-produce the potential vaccine, said it will price the shot at $3 per dose for the country and other emerging economies.

Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla during a recent visit to Dhaka said the country will prioritise Bangladesh in distributing the Oxford vaccine once it is approved.

Later, Bangladesh’s Beximco Pharmaceuticals opened talks with Serum Institute to become the sole distributor of the vaccine in Bangladesh.

“Serum Institute’s advantage is that it is working on three vaccine candidates, including that of Oxford,” said Salman F Rahman, vice-president of Beximco and the prime minister’s adviser on private sector industry and investment.

A Beximco statement did not give details about how many vaccines the company might receive.

“Now we will have to negotiate with them [Serum] about the quantity, the price for the private sector and the price for the government,” Salman said.

“There will be a section of people who will even want to buy the vaccine. And it will be meaningless for the government to provide the vaccine for free to those who can afford it on their own. The government has limited resources,” he added.