The vaccine

This session will look at the development of a vaccine for COVID-19 and what cooperation is needed to fight the virus. More broadly it will examine the way in which bio-medical engineering and the healthcare sector is meeting the needs of changing demographics and creating a better future for the world’s citizens.[vc_quotes layout=”accordion” 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title=”Moderator” el_class=””][vc_empty_space height=”10px”]

Key takeaways

Kari

• The vaccine progress to date has been nothing short of heroic, but the equitable manufacture and distribution of the vaccine is now the hardest part and must be needs based.
• The most important thing in the first instance is to get the vaccine to the most vulnerable.
• The risk of accelerated vaccine production and distribution is a risk worth taking. The existing vaccines are potent.
• We need to work both bottom up and top down but in the USA we have seen a failure at both levels.
• You cannot mandate human behaviour so we need a lot more education on why health rules are in place.
• A lot of the claims made regarding COVID safety are worrying.
• It is dangerous for leaders to suggest that individual rights are more important than public health.
• COVID has forced us to supercharge technological innovation and that positive trajectory is likely to continue.
• COVID will force domestic vaccine manufacturing capabilities to be strengthened.
• Coldchain logistics will be an interesting area for the future. Perhaps going forward vaccines will not need to be stored at negative 80. Storage at negative 80 is unlikely to be achieved at scale in Africa.
• We need a social safety net in place so that people are not choosing between staying at home not working or working whilst placing themselves and others at risk.
• This is not the last pandemic we will see.

Dr Ian

• Our leaders cannot simply lead by command, they must walk with the people.
• Different to Ebola, COVID has led to an infodemic – an outbreak of alternate views, which are truly hard to manage in a health sense.
• The vaccine is all about supply chain, logistics and sheer scale. Proactive testing for example demands an enormous amount of supply.
• Make no mistake, vaccination will be a slow process – A sign of success for Africa would be 20% of the continent to be vaccinated by the end of 2021. We have never seen a pandemic end in less than 2-3 years. There will be several waves to come.
• We need an agency like the WHO but unless we invest in it sufficiently and give it flexibility to use funds as it deems fit then we will not have the agency we need. If we didn’t have a WHO we would have to invent one. In the next 3 years, more criticism of the WHO will follow. The future of global health management could involve blocks of countries coming together to drive impact at scale.
• We have all learned that a healthy workforce is a productive workforce.
• We are likely to see a rebound of funding back into neglected health issues such as cancer and trauma care.
• Ethically minded businesses will grow massively going forward.
• There are clear implications for the management of investment portfolios. The world may only return to a resemblance of ‘normal’ earliest 2023 mostly due to the challenges presented by Africa and Central / South East Asia. Central and South America may only recover by around 2022.

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Unanswered questions and answers

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