Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and other members of an Independent Scientific Expert Group, have recommended a number of actions that should be urgently taken by members of the Group of Seven (G7) which is an intergovernmental organization consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In their letter, the scientists noted that without a globally coordinated approach managing COVID-19 as a global public health crisis, current approach will merely be putting out fires in one part of the world as another suffers.
“The result is a pandemic that continues on – with millions more lives lost and a real threat that any progress made to date is completely undone by a new variant that renders vaccines ineffective,” the scientists warned.
They called for the adoption of a single-minded mission to vaccinate the world as quickly as possible. Specifically, they asked the G7 to to continue to manufacture vaccines at scale, invest in expanding manufacturing in the immediate future and rapidly release excess doses to developing countries.
“In parallel, developed economies should invest in global vaccine manufacturing capacity, especially in Africa and countries with limited vaccine access,” the statement read.
While asking the G7 to use its influence to encourage the sharing of excess doses now, they also called for continual vaccine production until there is sufficient supply to override vaccine nationalism and supply the world.
There is also the need for G7 to help prepare countries to administer vaccines now, ahead of vaccines arriving. They noted that all countries need to be supported to develop the necessary infrastructure now to distribute vaccines and this venture requires active support, including on-the-ground logistics and aid where appropriate.
The NCDC boss and his colleagues also asked the G7 to support safe and effective vaccines by using the group’s use its credibility to build confidence in vaccines by immediately issuing a joint statement recognizing the efficacy and safety of all WHO-approved vaccines, and take on responsibility to support safe, work-horse vaccines.
They noted that a triumph of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the ability to develop vaccines rapidly to help us fight this disease. However, lack of data transparency, mixed messages from governments, and foul play on social media have contributed to a torrent of misinformation about their safety and efficacy.
“These messages are confusing and are amplified in the developing world increasing the problem of vaccine hesitancy. We can confidently say that the four vaccines approved in G7 countries – AstraZeneca, J&J, Moderna, and Pfizer-BioNTech – are all effective at reducing disease and particularly the risk of hospitalisation and death,” the experts stated.
Moreover, they called for the elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy to expedite the approval of new vaccines and therapeutics including monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and antivirals, supporting every country to use therapeutics for prevention and treatment. They asked that drugs, such as safe and effective mAbs that could be used to prevent severe illness (i.e., among unvaccinated or vulnerable populations) in surge settings need to be rapidly approved for both therapeutic and preventative of progression to severe disease in pre-emptive use.
Another request that was made to the G7 by the independent scientists called for the creation of a globally coordinated data platform to measure everything that matters. Using its innovation, they asked the G7 to build a globally coordinated data platform that integrates genomic sequencing, pandemic surveillance, and efficacy, safety, and pharmacovigilance data for vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.
“We need a single, global view of the of this virus in order to best address the pandemic. We need to be able to track viral mutations, their spread, how contagious they are, and how they impact people’s health. We also need to know how effective and safe our tool kit is against these diseases,” the experts affirmed.
They noted that there is the need to be able to compare this to observed epidemiological trends and use this data to inform response, including use of public health interventions, surge deployment of clinical resources, and R&D.
“Without this surveillance we are flying blind and we will not know where or when a highly consequential variant emerges. This can be most directly accomplished by establishing data transparency and interoperability between existing platforms,” they said.
Other experts that joined Iheakweazu in signing the letter included Jeremy Farrar, Director, Wellcome Trust; Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO, Novo Nordisk Foundation; Trevor Mundel, President of Global Health, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; David Agus, Founding Director, CEO of USC’s Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine; John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine, University of Oxford; Sue Ann Costa Clemens, Director Vaccine Group Oxford-Brazil; and Glenda Gray, President and CEO, South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC).
Others are Gagandeep Kang, Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory, Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College, Vellore; Shabir Madhi, Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; John-Arne Røttingen, Ambassador for Global Health, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Lynda Stuart, Deputy director, Vaccines & Human Immunobiology, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.