Consider This from NPR - With 1 Million Dead Worldwide, The Latest On A Coronavirus Vaccine

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

With 10 vaccine candidates now in phase three trials, one expert predicts another million people worldwide could die within three to six months.One of those vaccine candidates is produced by Novavax. Dr. Gregory Glenn, head of research and development for Novavax, tells NPR he's not concerned about politics tainting the vaccine approval process.While the world waits for a vaccine, NPR science reporter Michaeleen Doucleff reports on a small but growing number of scientists asking: what if we already have a vaccine that could slow the spread of the virus? In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.We're working on an upcoming episode about pandemic precautions and we want to hear from you. Fill out the form on this page and we may follow up on your response. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The actual number is almost certainly higher. But according to the trusted count of confirmed deaths from researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the coronavirus has now killed more than a million people around the world. Reaching a million deaths is a really extraordinary milestone. None of us had even heard of this disease a year ago, and more than a million people around the world have died. I wouldn't be surprised if we get another million in the next three to six months. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health,

is looking at countries like India, where cases are rising and population density is high. Here in the U.S., the virus is still killing thousands of people each week. Of course, how many people die really is up to us based on what we decide to do in terms of preventive public health measures. But most of the models suggest that there are going to be a lot more people who are going to get infected and die from this disease. Consider this.

Multiple vaccine trials are in their final phase, but we're probably still closer to the beginning of the pandemic than the end. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Tuesday, September 29th. This message comes from NPR sponsor Twilio, a customer engagement platform trusted by millions of developers, enabling you to reinvent how you connect with your customers. Whatever your use case, Twilio has your back. It's time to build. Visit Twilio.com. Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from BetterHelp, online counseling by licensed professional counselors specializing in isolation, depression, stress, and anxiety. Visit betterhelp.com slash consider to learn more and get 10% off your first month.

With the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the president is hoping to fill the seat with a conservative judge. And evangelicals who play an important part in American politics have been waiting for this moment. But how did evangelicals become such a powerful force? Listen now to the history of evangelicals on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. There are now 10 coronavirus vaccines in the final phase of testing around the world. That's phase three, which means large-scale tests of a vaccine on tens of thousands of people. Those trials have to be so large for a few reasons. Many of the volunteers will get a placebo. Plus, researchers want to make sure they catch rare complications.

And they need to vaccinate enough people to ensure that some of them will actually get exposed to the virus in their daily lives. Some people will have exposure just by the nature of the kind of work they do. Ruth Karin directs the Johns Hopkins Vaccine Initiative. For example, it could be if they're healthcare workers or if they're other kinds of frontline workers. They will have high levels of exposure. Out of 30,000 or so volunteers in a typical phase three trial, researchers are looking for around 150 cases of COVID-19. That's enough to make reliable comparisons between the vaccinated group and the placebo group. The way it happens in the trial is you need cases, right?

So you obviously couldn't prove anything if there are no cases. Dr. Gregory Glenn runs research and development at Novavax, the most recent company to enter a vaccine in a Phase III trial. Novavax is based in the U.S., but the company is actually starting its trial in the U.K., where they expect to have an easy time finding cases. We felt that the attack rate would be high, the transmission would zoom up in the wintertime, which it looks like it's going to do. By mid-October, Glenn says, the trial will expand to the U.S. as well. Here, of course, there's concern that the White House could pressure the Food and Drug Administration to approve a vaccine too early,

which prompted drug companies earlier this month to band together and insist they won't be pressured into releasing an unsafe vaccine. Novavax is one of the nine companies that made that pledge. My colleague Sasha Pfeiffer asked Gregory Glenn about that. Look, our MO here is to be transparent. We know the FDA is, they have a formula that they're not going to deviate from. So I don't think that there's going to be any chance that there's going to be some shortcut made. You truly believe you can be immune to political pressure? You know, me, yes. I'm the head of R&D. Yeah, yes.

You know, it's, yes, absolutely. The FDA, you know, I think we can count on the FDA. They are really super experienced people. You know, what might happen around deployment may be another issue. And that is complicated. But I think, you know, for me, for my conduct, my daily conduct, I'm after generating the kind of information that no one's going to argue with. A more personal question about the vaccine race aspect of developing a vaccine. Because lives worldwide are on the line, and so is the economy, since these coronavirus shutdowns are devastating for businesses. So on one hand, you have to be a clear-eyed, objective scientist

about the data and the facts and your findings. But how do you balance that with the human element of this? Lives are riding on this. Yeah. No, I wish I was superhuman. I get depressed. I feel at first the pressure and then I see the tragedies. I see the disruption. It's sad. And it's pointing back to get busy, get something done. So it is a cycle of, you know, I do have an emotional roller coaster because I would love to have a vaccine implemented and out there. And I've never worked so hard in my life. It's like I've lived seven lifetimes since January. It's quite a thing to be involved in.

It really must be. It really is amazing. The mobilization of all these companies to do this in this period of time is going to be some incredible story. And I get to live a super interesting chapter. Every day we're solving problems that are big, science problems, logistics problems. Yet we're convinced that we can lift this cloud off the globe. And so it gets us up out of bed in the morning, but it can be a struggle. Gregory Glenn runs research and development at Novavax.

So let's review the timeline. What's the earliest a phase 3 vaccine trial could be done? Best case scenario, some scientists and public health officials estimate it could be as early as the end of October. Even then, it would still take more time to manufacture and distribute for the public. And even then, the first doses would go to people who need it most, like frontline health care workers. Vaccine might not be available to everyone until spring or summer of next year. The vaccine availability will go a giant step to controlling the infection, but you're not going to completely eradicate or eliminate it. Anthony Fauci told the Senate committee last week

it's unusual for a vaccine to be 100 percent effective and not everyone's likely to get it. You're still going to have vulnerable people in the population and the presence of those vulnerable people will require the implementation of public health practices including testing, identification, isolation and contact tracing. And continuing to wear masks and practice good social distancing and the other public health strategies that we know work to keep us safe. Absolutely. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm out of time. Thank you, Senator Smith.

While the world waits for a vaccine, there's a small but growing group of scientists investigating whether we might already have one that could slow the virus down. NPR's Maiklin Ducliff explains. In the early 1900s, two French scientists took on one of the most deadly diseases, tuberculosis. At the time, TB was killing three times as many people per capita as COVID is today, and there was no vaccine. So these French guys decided to try to develop one for TB. They used what was the most effective approach at the time, live bacteria. Dr. Daniel Hoft is a TB expert at St. Louis University. He says the scientists took a strain of TB from cows and grew it in the lab for a long time. They left it unattended for about nine years, but it continued to slowly grow. And weaken. The scientists waited until the TB bacteria were just weak enough not to make people sick, but still strong enough to trigger an immune response.

They decided to use it. And they found it didn't make people sick. In fact, it protected babies against TB, cutting their risk of a deadly infection by up to 70%. It was a game changer. It caught off like wildfire and has been, if not the most commonly used vaccine in the world ever since. The vaccine is called BCG. And over the past century, scientists have noticed something surprising. It not only protects babies against TB, but it also protects them against many deadly childhood infections. In the 1920s in Sweden, the kids who got BCG at birth, they had three-fold decrease in mortality. That's Dr. Bardiya Amarlak at the UT Southwestern Medical Center.

He says scientists don't understand exactly how BCG fights off other diseases. But there's evidence that it's not just BCG that can do this, but any live vaccine, such as polio, measles, and even the live flu vaccine. Robert Gallo directs the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He was one of the main scientists involved in the discovery of HIV. He says live vaccines supercharge the body's frontline defenders, the cells that first notice an invader and attack it. And they yell out a scream, help.

It triggers off a lot of mechanisms to stop this infection immediately. Now Gallo and scientists are wondering if BCG or another live vaccine can help a person clear out COVID-19 more quickly. So they not only don't get sick, they aren't contagious. If enough people were protected for a period of time, you wouldn't be spreading the virus. We could break the back of the epidemic. To test this hypothesis, scientists around the world are running more than a dozen clinical trials with BCG. Dr. Moshe Arditi leads one of them at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

He says we already know BCG is safe. More than 130 million kids every year, every year, receive the BCG vaccine. So the safety profile has been very strong. And it's cheap, just a few dollars per dose. The big question is, how effective will it be? Arditi says no one believes BCG will be better than a specific vaccine for COVID-19, but it could be approved and available more quickly, even by early next year. This is just to have a bridge until we have the most effective,

the most safe vaccine. And how ironic would it be if the key to stopping the world's newest disease is one of our oldest vaccines. NPR's Michaelene Ducliffe. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Audie Cornish.