Last week, our colleague Sara Jerving visited South Africa’s messenger RNA vaccine technology transfer hub and spoke with Executive Director Caryn Fenner and Afrigen Managing Director Petro Terblanche. Sara writes about the work ahead to develop an mRNA-based vaccine for COVID-19 that low- and middle-income countries can replicate — and the hurdles left to clear.
• The hub is located in an industrial corner of Cape Town and housed in an unassuming facility of Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, the company leading the hub’s work. It takes up about 1,000 square meters (10, 764 square feet) of land — almost twice the size of an NBA basketball court — containing a labyrinth of white hallways, hermetically sealed doors, and removable wall panels that allow for the easy entry and removal of equipment that connect a series of sterile laboratories and preserve certain air pressures.
• The hub still awaits pieces of equipment that will be key to developing its first COVID-19 vaccine. But it has already started sharing knowledge and training its “spokes” — companies from LMICs that have expressed interest in producing mRNA vaccines. A team from Indonesia arrived at the hub for training earlier this month, and an additional team from Bangladesh is next.
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• While the initial goal is to produce COVID-19 vaccines, the hub’s longer-term vision includes the production of mRNA vaccines for other diseases, including Lassa fever, Ebola, Marburg, tuberculosis, chikungunya, dengue, hepatitis, measles, and HIV. This could help keep the hub’s work financially sustainable, even if demand for COVID-19 vaccines eventually wanes.
• But its ambitions are threatened by Moderna's patents. Afrigen — with the help of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg — used publicly available information, including the mRNA sequence of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, to develop its own shot. While Moderna says it won’t enforce its COVID-19 patents in 92 LMICs, the company has patents in South Africa that lay claim to mRNA technology more generally, which could prevent the hub from working on other mRNA vaccines.
• Terblanche says South Africa is a “nonexamining” country, meaning filed patents are approved without scrutiny. And some LMICs hosting hub spokes also follow lax patent practices, she says, such that similar patents could block the production of mRNA vaccines elsewhere.
Read: Moderna’s patents stand in way of mRNA vaccine hub’s grand vision
+ For Devex Pro subscribers, Sara also wrote about the African Development Bank Group’s $3 billion investment plan to bolster vaccine and pharmaceutical manufacturing in the continent. Not gone Pro yet? Try it for free for 15 days.
The saga continues
Amruta reported in March that WHO will be releasing this month its estimates of excess deaths caused by COVID-19, which is more than double the official death toll of 6 million. But not everyone’s happy. The Indian government does not agree with the estimates, which show the death toll in India at more than 2 million, at least four times the official figure.
The story has been picked up by multiple media outlets, and India’s Health Ministry released a statement last Saturday saying that China, Iran, Bangladesh, Syria, Ethiopia, and Egypt are among the countries also raising questions about WHO’s methodology and the use of “unofficial sets of data” for its estimates. But Steve MacFeely, WHO’s director of data and analytics, said during a webinar Wednesday that India is the only country to have raised objections to WHO’s methodology for estimating COVID-19 excess mortality.
ICYMI: Amruta broke the story of India’s resistance to WHO’s new excess mortality estimates in March.
Another chance
In 2020, Bhutan and East Timor were close to eliminating malaria: The latter had reported no new indigenous cases since 2018, while the former saw only two such cases in 2019. But in the year that COVID-19 struck, East Timor reported three new indigenous cases of malaria, while Bhutan’s count increased to 22.
In 2021, both countries recommitted to eliminating malaria by 2025. So what will it take to get them there? Ahead of World Malaria Day next week, Sarthak Das, CEO at the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance, tells Jenny that both countries need cross-border elimination plans that allow officials and health workers in border areas to manage malaria, as well as high-level political commitment to elimination.
East Timor and Bhutan share borders with Indonesia and India, respectively — both countries where malaria continues to be a serious public health threat. Out of all their confirmed cases in 2020, 50% of malaria cases in East Timor and nearly 20% in Bhutan were imported.
Read: How Bhutan, East Timor can get back on track to eliminating malaria
COVID-19 quick-fire
Can we mask you a question? As Shanghai grapples with a COVID-19 lockdown, other parts of the world are busy debating whether to mask up or mask off. In the United States, videos of airline passengers and crew members removing their masks circulated on social media this week after a federal judge ruled that the government’s mask mandate on airplanes and other forms of transportation is unlawful. The decision has received mixed reactions and the U.S. Department of Justice appealed the ruling on Wednesday after CDC said that “masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health.”
Donations deferred. An official in the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has said that an additional 16.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be sent to the vaccine-sharing initiative COVAX in the “near future,” our colleague Will Worley tells us. To date, Britain has delivered just over half of the 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses that it pledged to donate to other countries through COVAX and bilaterally.
More delays. Supplies from COVAX’s Humanitarian Buffer mechanism didn’t arrive in Pakistan last month as expected. But Peter Ophoff, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ Pakistan delegation, tells Jenny that “Pakistan Red Crescent teams are ready to deliver vaccines as soon as doses arrive in the country under the humanitarian buffer in the weeks ahead.”
ICYMI: COVAX Humanitarian Buffer's vaccine delivery to Thailand canceled
What we’re reading
In Myanmar, security forces are intensifying their crackdown on doctors opposing military rule. [The New York Times]
Chinese doctors question the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine Lianhua Qingwen for COVID-19. [South China Morning Post]
Demand for Pfizer’s oral antiviral treatment for COVID-19 lags globally. [Reuters]
About the authors
Jenny Lei Ravelo@JennyLeiRavelo
Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex Senior Reporter based in Manila. She covers global health, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization, and other development and humanitarian aid trends in Asia Pacific. Prior to Devex, she wrote for ABS-CBN, one of the largest broadcasting networks in the Philippines, and was a copy editor for various international scientific journals. She received her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas.
Amruta Byatnalamrutabyatnal
Amruta Byatnal is a Senior Editor at Devex where she edits coverage on global development, humanitarian crises and international aid. She writes Devex CheckUp, a weekly newsletter on the latest developments in global health. Previously, she worked for News Deeply in the United States, and The Hindu in India. She is a graduate of Cornell University where she studied international development. She is currently based in New Delhi.