HHS Secretary Alex Azar encouraged by proposed Coronavirus vaccine timeline

Fox News ^ | 03/04/2020 | Julia Musto

[SeekAndFind]

Health and Human Services (HHS) Sec. Alex Azar said Wednesday that he is encouraged by the proposed timeline for a coronavirus vaccine.

In an interview on "America's Newsroom," Azar said that the doctors President Trump met with Tuesday, including NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, had designed a vaccine within three days of getting the genetic sequence to the virus from China.

"Then, just two days ago the FDA granted approval for the NIH [National Institutes of Health] -- that's Dr. Fauci's group -- to begin what's called 'phase one' clinical testing in about five weeks," he explained. "That's where we're going to test the safety of this vaccine probably in about 40 to 50 people."

Azar said that it would take a year to 18 months before there could be a fully-developed vaccine because it needs to be as safe as it is effective

"So, we're talking a lot more about therapeutics that may be getting developed," he said. "Existing medicines are getting tested as we speak on people who have the virus because somebody who has the virus -- your safety efficacy balance is a little bit different because you're going to see if that works."

Azar remains upbeat by the progress.

"I'm certainly encouraged by that vaccine timeline," Azar told the "Newsroom" hosts. "That would be probably the fastest vaccine delivery in human history. If we could get a vaccine developed in 12 to 18 months, that's incredible."

He also noted therapies and antivirals could potentially "deliver faster" results. Azar emphasized that the ability to test patients for the virus is "radically expanding."

Thus far, more than 90,000 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed worldwide with more than 3,100 deaths; 108 of those cases have been recorded in the United States with nine deaths in Washington state alone.

[frank ballenger]

The Chinese were keeping the virus problem secret at first to cover their regime’s tail.

They withheld samples from the world and this slowed down the countermeasure vaccine.

The Chinese Communists are world outlaws for this.

[Bob434]

[[”That would be probably the fastest vaccine delivery in human history. If we could get a vaccine developed in 12 to 18 months, that’s incredible.” ]]

Israel says they can get one to the public in 3 months- 90 days- they are fast tracking approval apparently

[I want the USA back]

That’s good, but no matter what is done, some will bitch and moan. Nothing will ever be good enough for the people who expect government to solve all problems.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Israel says they can get one to the public in 3 months- 90 days- they are fast tracking approval apparently

But can they guarantee safety in 90 days?

[Bob434]

no but even the conventional process of approval here in us can’t guarantee safety either- it’s better- but not fool proof- I think when a crisis happens, like what could possibly happen with this virus - if people begin dropping dead at alarming rate- you have to weigh risk, and perhaps fast track- I don’t think the virus at this point warrants fast tracking, but we’ll see how deadly it gets-

[BushCountry]

Israel got lucky. They were testing a new vaccine and used a virus a Coronavirus like virus to test against months ago. They just had to do a minor re-sequencing to match the current one. I think they are already in human testing.

[BushCountry]

Better explanation.

Link to article.

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/israel-migal-covid-19-vaccine/

Scientists at MIGAL Research Institute in Israel expect to start producing a Covid-19 vaccine in the next eight-ten weeks, based on their avian coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV) vaccine.

The team developed the IBV vaccine after four years of research, funded by the country’s Ministry of Science & Technology and conducted in alliance with the Ministry of Agriculture.

IBV is a disease affecting poultry, and the new vaccine was found to be effective in pre-clinical trials at the Volcani Institute.

The researchers discovered a potential Covid-19 vaccine candidate as a by-product of the IBV vaccine. They made genetic alterations to adapt the IBV vaccine to the human strain of the novel coronavirus.

[DoughtyOne]

On Monday two days ago, the reporting of the COVID-19 numbers
changed.

Previous to that, the large numbers would be posted together around
17:30 to 18:30 PST. That means that the majority of new cases, deaths,
and the recovered numbers would be spilled together.

On Monday the negative numbers were published at 13:30 and the positive
numbers three hours later at 16:30.

Yesterday the negative numbers were published at 9:30 & 12:30, with the
positive numbers coming in at 17:53.

Today that same format seems to be playing out. Large negative numbers
were reported at 9:30 and 12:30. It remains to be seen when the positive
numbers will show up.

What this means is that the increase in cases shows up starting as
much as eight hours or more before the recovery numbers show up.

This creates a false narrative that things are getting quickly worse.
Then the media runs with that.

To the contrary, by the end of the day these numbers more than balance out,
with the number of active cases shrinking each day.

I think it's a ploy to make this thing look worse than it is, and the
general public won't actually understand how they are being gamed.

Yesterday morning 1,337 new cases were announced at 09:43. At 12:33
that number had grown to 1,881, and that was made public. Not until 17:53
was it released that 2,621 cases had been resolved. At that time it was
reported that in total 2,184 total new cases had been reported during
the day.

Upshot of the day, there were 2,717 cases resolved yesterday,
and after balancing new cases with the resolved cases, there was a drop
in active cases of 494 cases.

I don't believe that is the message that will be broadcast to the public.

[norwaypinesavage]

The US Pharma industry is hobbled by the FDA bureaucracy that requires a $3 billion drug approval process that takes years to conquer. It's already been said that at best, "a vaccine will take several weeks to be demonstrated to be safe, over a year to be demonstrated to be effective, and then several more months to gear up for production". Months can be carved away from this by eliminating bureaucratic hurdles.

Once the drug is demonstrated to be safe, the company can immediately start the production process. The US government can write an insurance policy to the company guaranteeing recovery of production costs if the FDA fails to ultimately approve mass production. The "effective" part of the approval process can include offering volunteers use of the drug if they wish to choose it. This could all put likely drugs in the hands of needed users well ahead of the start of next fall's "flu season". Most likely some of the trial drugs will be more effective than others. Which of these work best, will likely already be known by then, too.

[Freeport]

Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (INO) said Tuesday it is accelerating the timeline for development of a vaccine to treat the coronavirus that has now sickened about 89,000 people and caused more than 3,000 deaths. At a meeting with the U.S. Coronavirus Task Force at the White House, Inovio Chief Executive Dr. J. Joseph Kim said the company had designed its DNA vaccine INO-4800 in three hours after the publication of the genetic sequence of the virus, called COVID-19. "We immediately began preclinical testing and small-scale manufacture and have already shared robust preclinical data with our public and private partners," Kim told the task force, according to a statement. "We plan to begin human clinical trials in the U.S. in April and soon thereafter in China and South Korea, where the outbreak is impacting the most people." Plymouth Meeting, Pa.-based Inovio is expecting to deliver 1 million doses of vaccine by year-end, using its existing resources, but will need additional resources to scale up to provide further amounts.