COMMENT | Bleak future for M'sia to get workable Covid-19 vaccine

COMMENT | On Aug 2, a Bloomberg news report stated that "Wealthy countries have already locked up more than a billion doses of coronavirus vaccines, raising concerns that the rest of the world will be at the back of the queue in the global effort to defeat the pathogen.

"Although international groups and a number of nations are promising to make vaccines affordable and accessible to all, doses will likely struggle to keep up with demand in a world of roughly 7.8 billion people."

The report then stated that "The possibility that wealthier countries will monopolise supply, a scenario that played out in the 2009 swine flu pandemic, has fueled concerns among poor nations and health advocates."

Although there are so far, at least 40 Covid-19 vaccines undergoing Phase 1 & Phase 2 human clinical trials and seven vaccine candidates in the final Phase 3 clinical trials, I am not optimistic that a developing country like Malaysia would be able to secure a successfully-tested Covid-19 vaccine. Here’s why.

1) Unlike some Asian countries, we do not have any human vaccine manufacturing facilities that we can leverage on with a vaccine developer concerned to manufacture their vaccine here under licence.

It might have been a strategic mistake that when our BioValley Project started in 2003, we did not embark on such a vaccine manufacturing programme.

2) In a global population of 7.8 billion people, even if a vaccine is found now, there is not enough...