The race to find a vaccine for Covid-19 started even before the virus emerged, journalist Brendan Borrell says.
He’s written a book - First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine that looks at the individuals who made the vaccine possible.
The book has already been optioned for an HBO series.
Photo: AFP / Tek Image/Science Photo Library
“One of the heroes I write about is a fellow named Barney Graham, a virologist and vaccinologist who was working at the US National Institutes of Health.
"He worked on these obscure viruses that nobody really cared about. Everybody was focused on HIV, which is a very important disease, and he was looking at an obscure virus called the respiratory syncytial virus and the discoveries he made from that virus basically set the stage for him to develop a Coronavirus vaccine,” Borrell told Jesse Mulligan.
Another early pioneer was a Hungarian chemist called Katalin Karico.
“She was a key player in developing the tools that we needed to get the RNA in the vaccines from Moderna, BioNtech and Pfizer into human cells, basically.
“She figured out a way to outwit our bodies’ defence systems, so that it would accept this foreign RNA that's used in the vaccines.”
Once information about the Covid-19 started to trickle out to the world, Australian professor of infectious diseases Eddie Holmes had a pivotal role, Borrell says.
“Eddie is an amazing character. And I spoke to him for the book. He had this close relationship with Dr Zhang [Dr Zhang Jixian] and they'd been studying viruses, RNA viruses like SARS and the new Coronavirus.
“At the time in early January, Eddie had seen that analysis of this gene sequence of this unknown virus, but he didn't actually have the real the sequence in his hands. The international community was clamouring for it.
“Eddie was getting calls from the UK, from colleagues in the US. And he gets Zhang on the phone one morning, Zhang is about to fly to Shanghai and he's like we've got to release the sequence.
“And finally, he concedes to do it, they upload it and it ricochets around the world. And that was kind of the start of the vaccine race.”
Meanwhile behind the scenes there were mixed messages coming from the White House, he says.
“Just at the moment when we're starting to sort of get some unanimity, where most scientists are like, this is going to be very bad.
“That is when members of the administration start to muzzle the public messaging, they start to stop this information from getting out.”
One man in the administration Robert Kaldec, was another hero, Borrell says. He served as assistant secretary of health and human Services in the Trump administration.
Photo: Text Publishing
“Bob Kadlec was a Trump appointee, but one of the architects of Operation Warp Speed, which was our program that accelerated vaccine development and manufacturing.”
Operation Warp Speed was a huge success, he says.
“We poured billions of dollars into this effort. And I think the benefits clearly trickled down to other countries.
“It's kind of an irony, of course, the former President Trump was very inwardly focused, he pulled out of the WHO and so on, he wouldn't let people collaborate in these international vaccine collaborations.
“Yet, this program that he funded, ultimately has had some benefits for the global community.”
Jared Kushner, the president's son in law, also had a hand in ensuring Operation Warp Speed got going, he says.
“He has the President's ear, anybody who starts to work for him or report to him, has an incredible amount of power. And it was Kushner, who basically got Operation Warp Speed off the ground. So yes, we can thank him for doing that.”
Pharma companies don’t have the best reputations in the US, but their repose to the vaccine was largely laudable, he says.
“What happened during the pandemic was the best of the best working to solve this crisis as fast as possible. And having seen the level of care that was taken in the planning the design, the developing and testing of these vaccines, and then the regulatory process here in the US, I think they did a great job and taking the right amount of caution to ensure that these things are safe.
“And now they've been hundreds of millions of people, billions of people [jabbed] and the side effects have been very, very limited. So, I absolutely trust these vaccines.”
While the race to find vaccines for Covid has been a success, roll out internationally has been a failure, he says.
“In many African countries the vaccination rate is pitifully low. Even here in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti, I just looked up 1 percent of the population has been vaccinated. That's crazy.
“And that basically allows the virus to evolve unchecked, and potentially spring up again.”
