Backing eight vaccine candidates,rather than four,would have cost us perhaps billions of dollars. But that would have been prudent insurance against the risk the winners we’d picked might lose. And,indeed,we’re bearing those costs now.
The University of Queensland vaccine faltered out of the gate. The AstraZeneca vaccine,on which we’ve pinned much of our hopes,has far lower efficacy than the Moderna,Pfizer,and Novavax vaccines,according to published data on phase 3 trial results. And its improperly performed stage-three trials generated uncertainty about when a second dose should be administered and its efficacy among older recipients.
As it stands,we’ve failed to order a single dose of the Moderna vaccine. And we’ve ordered only enough of the Pfizer vaccine to cover one in five Australians.
We’ve ordered 50 million doses of the third-best,Novavax,vaccine but have chosen not to produce it locally even though it’s performed better than AstraZeneca. And we have no orders for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine,which has similar efficacy to AstraZeneca but only requires a single dose.
It didn’t need to be this way. Way back in March 2020,Microsoft founder Bill Gates recognised the stakes,funding in advance the manufacture of seven of the leading contenders – not knowing which would succeed,he reasoned any waste would be far less costly than any further delay.
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Many other countries got it right. Israel,with no vaccine manufacturing capability,has already administered 5 million doses to its 9 million inhabitants. The United Arab Emirates,Britain and the United States,among others,have also vaccinated millions.
Had we secured more of the leading candidates last year and not insisted on duplicating the approval processes already completed overseas – naively asserting our regulatory superiority over Britain,EU,and US – we could have begun vaccinating by Christmas. But what can we do now?
We recently failed to reach an agreement with Moderna. It’s hard to conceive of any terms they might demand that we shouldn’t be willing to accept,given the stakes. And we seemingly haven’t tried to secure any agreement with Johnson and Johnson. Meanwhile,the US government recently secured an additional 100 million Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
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While the Prime Minister announced new funding for the vaccine rollout,none of it will go towards additional or accelerated vaccine supplies. The government seems content with the very slow rollout. But this is no time for complacency.
We need to do whatever it takes to secure additional doses as quickly as possible. We should be willing to pay an obscenely high price for them. And any vaccine that has already been approved by Britain,the EU and the US should automatically receive approval in Australia.
We must treat our vaccine rollout like the wartime effort it is. Despite our early victories,the war is far from won.
Steven Hamilton is Assistant Professor of Economics at George Washington University and Richard Holden is Professor of Economics at UNSW.
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