Odisha News, Odisha Latest news, Odisha Daily - OrissaPOST
  • Home
  • Trending
  • State
  • Metro
  • National
  • International
  • Business
  • Feature
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • More..
    • Odisha Special
    • Editorial
    • Opinion
    • Careers
    • Sci-Tech
    • Timeout
    • Horoscope
    • Today’s Pic
  • Video
  • Epaper
  • News in Odia
  • Home
  • Trending
  • State
  • Metro
  • National
  • International
  • Business
  • Feature
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • More..
    • Odisha Special
    • Editorial
    • Opinion
    • Careers
    • Sci-Tech
    • Timeout
    • Horoscope
    • Today’s Pic
  • Video
  • Epaper
  • News in Odia
No Result
View All Result
OrissaPOST - Odisha Latest news, English Daily -
No Result
View All Result

UNITED TRY FOR CURE

Updated: May 20th, 2020, 08:00 IST
in Opinion
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on WhatsAppShare on Linkedin

Susan Athey, Kendall Hoyt and Michael Kremer


As countries around the world ponder strategies for developing a COVID-19 vaccine, it should be clear that the fastest and most effective approach is to work together. More than any other single intervention, a widely distributed, effective vaccine would allow the world economy to restart. With $375 billion in global wealth evaporating each month, that moment cannot come soon enough.

Also Read

MS Swaminathan at IARI Wheat Field (2005). (Image credit- mssrf.org)

Farmers’ Scientist

2 years ago

Taming nature

2 years ago

So far, world leaders have pledged $8 billion in funding for the Access to COVID-19 tools (ACT), a global partnership to develop diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines. Yet that is only a fraction of the investment needed to bring a vaccine rapidly to scale. Fewer than one in ten vaccine or drug candidates that enter clinical trials is eventually approved for use. And, once approved, scaling up production to the necessary levels will introduce many more uncertainties. Vaccine manufacturing is an intricate process, requiring approval by regulators at each stage and in each facility. With some of the COVID-19 vaccine candidates having been built on hitherto unlicensed platforms, these safety and quality-control protocols could pose additional challenges to rapid deployment.

The best way to manage these risks is to collaborate. Multilateral investment in a diversified portfolio of vaccine candidates would help scale up production capacity as soon as a vaccine’s safety and efficacy have been established. Provided that much remains unknown about the novel coronavirus, we estimate that an investment of about $145 billion (.17 per cent of world GDP) would be ideal, but that a programme just half that size would yield substantial benefits. Although the United States and China are pursuing individual investment strategies, both could still advance their own national interests through international collaboration, either by way of the ACT Accelerator or via pooled contracts negotiated directly between countries and firms.

There are four primary benefits to collaboration. First, each country can reduce its own risk of having not invested in the right vaccine. By diversifying investment across a broad portfolio of technological approaches, all countries can improve their chances of having access to a successful vaccine. For example, our analysis of past vaccines suggests that if a country invests in two candidates that have begun clinical trials, the chance that one will succeed is at most one in three, and could be much lower. Yet if that country were to invest in a dozen or more candidates, the odds of near-term success would increase to more than eight in ten.

Moreover, the more distinct approaches there are in the mix, the greater the productive capacity that can be repurposed when some candidates fail. But the portfolio must not only be large; it also must be coordinated, because countries acting collaboratively can achieve far greater diversification than could any country acting on its own. Individual countries might all invest in similar candidates, which might all then fail for similar reasons.

Second, international collaboration allows for more resource pooling, which is needed to scale up investments in manufacturing capacity. Left to their own devices, individual countries are unlikely to invest in sufficient capacity to meet their own people’s needs, let alone global demand. If each country is “locked in” with a small set of suppliers, it will have less leverage to induce those firms to innovate and accelerate their manufacturing processes. And with significantly expanded capacity, there will be less conflict over vaccine access once successful candidates emerge.

Third, global coordination reduces the risk of supply-chain disruptions. Just as shortages of swabs and reagents have delayed coronavirus testing, so shortages of glass vials, bioreactors, or adjuvants (substances used to boost the body’s immune reaction to a vaccine) could delay efforts to deploy new treatments and vaccines. Biopharmaceutical production relies on a tightly linked global web, such that even the US, which ranks high on indices for biopharmaceutical innovation, is a net importer of most medical supplies.

Without international coordination, export controls imposed in response to the pandemic could interfere with the ability to scale up production in a timely fashion. By contrast, a substantial global effort would provide the necessary resources to anticipate and mitigate supply-chain bottlenecks, as well as reallocate essential ingredients and materials to the vaccine candidates that are the highest priority for mass production.

Fourth, to maximize the health and economic benefits of a vaccine, health-care workers and vulnerable populations in all countries must have top priority in receiving it. Here, international collaboration would allow participating countries to pursue a needs-based vaccine-allocation strategy, which is crucial for ending the pandemic as quickly as possible, and for restoring trade and travel with minimal risk of reintroducing infections from abroad. All countries have an imperative to protect essential workers, high-risk citizens, and those who must travel. And in today’s interdependent world, every country will benefit from enabling as many others as possible to restart their economies.

Countries that insist on pursuing individual investment strategies do so at considerable risk. They would be far better off with guaranteed access to the first tranche of successful vaccines under a global mechanism. A proprietary scheme that locks up supply among a small number of candidates may well fail, putting that country back at square one. Even a country with a unilateral investment programme would be serving its own interest by collaborating internationally. If its own candidates fail, it would still be in line for a vaccine developed from the internationally sponsored diversified portfolio.

We need the medical countermeasures to COVID-19 to proceed at an unprecedented pace, and on an unprecedented scale. Only a global response can ensure this outcome.

Susan Athey is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Kendall Hoyt is Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. Michael Kremer, a 2019 Nobel laureate in economics, is Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard University. © Project Syndicate.

Tags: COVID-19COVID-19 vaccineKendall HoytMichael KremerSusan Athey
ShareTweetSendShare
Suggest A Correction

Enter your email to get our daily news in your inbox.

 

OrissaPOST epaper Sunday POST OrissaPOST epaper

Click Here: Plastic Free Odisha

#MyPaperBagChallenge

Ramakanta Sahoo

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Sisirkumar Maharana

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Kamana Singh

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Debasis Mohanty

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Aman Kumar Barisal

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Jyotshna Mayee Pattnaik

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Bijswajit Pradhan

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Pratyasharani Ghibela

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Mrutyunjaya Behera

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Archana Parida

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Faiza Firdous

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Pratik Kumar Ghibela

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Pragyan Priyambada

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Subhajyoti Mohanty

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Narendra Kumar

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Anshuman Sahoo

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Priyasha Pradhan

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Nishikant Rout

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Vandana Singh

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Lopali Pattnaik

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Geetanjali Patro

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Akshaya Kumar Dash

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Tapaswini Mallick

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Tabish Maaz

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Sibarama Khotei

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Ipsita

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Parbati Mohanty

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Spinoj Pattnaik

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Sarmistha Nayak

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Arya Ayushman

December 12, 2019

Archives

Editorial

Trouble For Iran

Iran flag
June 18, 2025

The escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has plunged the Middle East into deeper turmoil, with ramifications stretching far beyond...

Read more

Korean Challenge

Lee Jae-myung
June 17, 2025

The people of South Korea have shown their maturity as votaries of democracy by recently gifting a landslide victory to...

Read more

Mid East Great Again

Iran's private message to Israel: ‘Can intervene if military campaign continues in Gaza’
June 16, 2025

For decades, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been warning about the “existential threat” that a nuclear-armed Iran poses...

Read more

Nameless Doctrine

June 15, 2025

On 12 June, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional and lasting ceasefire in Gaza....

Read more
  • Home
  • State
  • Metro
  • National
  • International
  • Business
  • Editorial
  • Opinion
  • Sports
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Jobs
Developed By Ratna Technology

© 2024 All rights Reserved by OrissaPOST

  • News in Odia
  • Orissa POST Epaper
  • Video
  • Home
  • Trending
  • Metro
  • State
  • Odisha Special
  • National
  • International
  • Sports
  • Business
  • Editorial
  • Entertainment
  • Horoscope
  • Careers
  • Feature
  • Today’s Pic
  • Opinion
  • Sci-Tech
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Jobs

© 2024 All rights Reserved by OrissaPOST

    • News in Odia
    • Orissa POST Epaper
    • Video
    • Home
    • Trending
    • Metro
    • State
    • Odisha Special
    • National
    • International
    • Sports
    • Business
    • Editorial
    • Entertainment
    • Horoscope
    • Careers
    • Feature
    • Today’s Pic
    • Opinion
    • Sci-Tech
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Jobs

    © 2024 All rights Reserved by OrissaPOST