COVID-19 vaccine efforts are disjointed, says leading medical journal editor
What's the story
As Oxford University's COVID-19 vaccine goes into human trials, people around the world are hoping to see a solution for the ongoing pandemic by the end of this year.
However, according to Dr. Richard Horton, the Editor-in-Chief of leading medical journal Lancet, all the vaccine development efforts, including those led by Oxford, are completely "disjointed" at the moment.
Here's more on what he said.
Comment
Vaccine efforts going forward uncoordinated
In a conversation with NDTV, Dr. Horton highlighted that every country is engaged in aggressive vaccine development programs, but all the efforts are uncoordinated.
"We will have many different candidate vaccines, [but] what I am worried about is the creative flourishing of these vaccines is going forward in a very uncoordinated way," he said, noting that it could lead to a confusing situation.
Coordination
WHO should coordinate vaccine development
Dr. Horton emphasized that the vaccine efforts should be coordinated globally so that "we could catalog which are the vaccine candidates, where they are being studied, and what the likelihood of their success".
"We need to have an International COVID vaccine initiative," he said, adding that the WHO should lead the effort to be able to get a proper assessment of the ongoing research.
BCG Vaccine
No evidence to be sure about BCG vaccine efficacy
Dr. Horton also spoke about the idea that the BCG vaccine prevents COVID-19.
"Right now, we have a whole bunch of ideas that are very interesting, but to be completely honest, there is no solid evidence for either," he said, emphasizing that we should not be doing anything based on these ideas because there is a lot of research that needs to be done.
Information
No evidence showing hydroxychloroquine's benefits
Extending the point of prevailing hypotheses, Dr. Horton cited the example of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug world has been demanding to prevent COVID-19. He said, "There is not one piece of evidence that hydroxychloroquine had any beneficial effect."
Testing
Testing efforts have to be ramped up
Among other things, the Lancet editor said that testing for COVID-19 needs to be ramped up with more antibody tests, instead of RT-PCR tests which are run by specialized high-tech labs.
He also said that we still do not know a lot about the coronavirus and have to apply science in the best possible way to tackle this threat to our very species.