Humankind has never had a more urgent task than creating broad immunity for COVID 19. Harvard in Tech Seattle presents COVID-19 Vaccine & Treatment with Dr Sebastian Sorsaburu, Dr Lorence Kim, Dr Aysu Uygur, Dr Tarun Gupta, Libby Page, Dr Rhiju Das, Roger Hackett, Mahenoor Yusuf.
Key Takeaways:
1. “Operation Warp Speed” an US based program funding 5 vaccine producers – Moderna, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Merck to expedite the production of vaccines. The program is committed to deliver a vaccine by Jan 2021 and they are on target
2. The Melinda & Gates Foundation has funded 7 factories of leading COVID 19 vaccine providers. This funding allows the exploration of vaccines along parallel paths, and avoids a bottleneck on the critical path of vaccine availability
3. More than one vaccine is necessary in order to allow distribution to reach global scale (15B). Innovation in transportation is necessary for some types of vaccines, such as mRNA to maintain stability. i.e OpenVaccine project
4. The vaccines must be provided to high risk groups and communities, independent of price
5. More collaboration is needed across borders and across companies for timely vaccine production