RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

A huge, global effort to try and find a vaccine for coronavirus is showing growing signs of success.

A number of possible candidates are moving into the final stages of testing, and some are even hitting production lines.

Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper Rick Morton on when Australians might see a coronavirus vaccine.

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RUBY:

Rick, let's start with the announcement this week about the vaccine manufacturing plant that's going to be built here in Australia. What do we know about it and how big of a deal is this?

RICK:

It will be the largest flu vaccine manufacturing plant in the southern hemisphere. And it's been built right here in Melbourne.

Archival Tape -- Newsreader

“A major announcement today in our country's fight against future pandemics with a near two billion dollar mega factory to produce home developed vaccines.”

Archival Tape -- Senator

“It will give us the ability to develop vaccines right here in Australia when we need them”

RICK:

It would take five years to build. And it's a joint venture between the Federal government and Squarest, which is a subsidiary of the biotech company CSL. And according to the Health Minister Greg Hunt what it will do is ensure that Australia has stockpiles of vaccines.

Archival Tape -- Greg Hunt

“This investment, which the Prime Minister has outlined, is a long term contract by the government to provide supply for Australia with firstly - a pandemic flu capability.”

RICK:

And he also said it will future proof Australia's access to Coronavirus vaccines.

Archival Tape -- Greg Hunt

“What we're doing is providing that certainty for coming generations”

RUBY:

OK, but this, of course, all hinges on a Coronavirus vaccine becoming available. So where are we with that? Because last week there was big news from Pfizer, right?

RICK:

Oh it was big news, very good news. So on Tuesday, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced its vaccine, which is a two dose MRNA vaccine, had reached a 90 per cent efficacy rate. Pzifer’s announcement was a world first and apparently a huge breakthrough in the containment of Coronavirus. So Pfizer joined forces with the German biotech company called Byan Tech, and they had a project called Project Lightspeed, and it really has lived up to its name. So the type of vaccine they're making is a messenger RNA vaccine. It's a newcomer in global health. We've never had an MRNA vaccine before. And they represent an exciting development because they can theoretically be repurposed for new types of pathogens with relative ease.

RUBY:

Right. So can you tell me more about what makes this type of vaccine different from others? It sounds like it sort of functions perhaps as a kind of base that can be fashioned into different types of vaccines?

RICK:

Correct, correct. So what they're doing essentially is just making a synthetic copy of a part of the virus. So they're copying the handbook or the instruction manual, I guess, for what we call the spike protein from the surface of the Coronavirus. That's the bit that gives the Coronavirus its crown of thorns kind of appearance. But it's also the bit, this spike, that the body recognises when that virus is inside you. And that's what triggers our immune response.

So rather than, you know, older types of vaccine manufacturing, they're not using any live virus. They're not using small versions of live virus. It's a synthetic lipid nanoparticle with the copy of the spike protein. And once that gets inside a cell in your body, information that it contains is handed over to that cell and the cell starts making copies of that spike protein for us and shoots them out into the body. And that kind of provokes an even stronger immune response then you might get with a traditional vaccine.

So it's essentially turning ourselves into a manufacturing plant for a harmless portion of the Coronavirus, which then goes out and our body recognises that and says, hey, we need to do something about this and start, you know, getting those T cell and B cell immune responses, which is what you're really looking for in a vaccine. And it's extremely lucrative. So last week, analysts at Morgan Stanley estimated the Pfizer vaccine would generate about 13 billion dollars in global sales next year alone.

RUBY:

OK, so there's a lot at stake here.

RICK:

There is huge amounts at stake. And if those predictions are right, it would vault this vaccine candidate into the leader as the most lucrative drug in Pfizer's stable, ahead of a pneumonia vaccine that made the company 5.8 dollars billion last year. And so the interesting thing about that, is that Pfizer actually rejected all government support in the development of the vaccine. Unlike two other leading vaccine candidates made by Maidana and AstraZeneca, which tapped into this multibillion dollar US government fund called Operation Warp Speed to fast track these promising vaccine options, Pfizer had been going it alone.

RUBY:

And so why is that?

Archival Tape -- US Newsreader

“CEO Albert Boula joins us now.”

RICK:

Well, according to the chairman and chief executive, Dr Albert Bourla, it was about not being hamstrung by bureaucracy.

Archival Tape -- Albert Boula

“The reason why I did it was because I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy. When you get money from someone, that always comes with strings. They want to see how you're going to progress, what type of moves you are going to do. They want the report. I didn't want to have any of that I want “

RICK:

He told CBS News in September he didn't want the scientists involved, distracted by having to fill out reports and that sort of thing. He said that when you get money from someone that always comes with strings

Archival Tape -- Albert Boula

“Basically, I gave them an open cheque book so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else.”

RICK:

But he also hinted that he didn't want this to become a political play.

Archival Tape -- Albert Boula

“And also, I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way.”

RICK:

By the way, that turned out to be quite a prescient remark because the Pfizer announcement was immediately draughted into the presidential culture wars without any evidence. Donald Trump claimed it was a plot against his re-election. And that view was given succour by conservative commentators on Australia Sky News Network.

Archival Tape -- Australian Newsreader 1

“But the timing of this announcement, just six days after the US election, not before, as Donald Trump had hoped, strikes me as highly suspicious.”

Archival Tape -- Australian Newsreader 2

“And I ask you, if Pfizer had made that announcement two weeks ago in the last week of the US election campaign, might not have helped Donald Trump, might it not?”

RICK:

But conspiracies aside, there are other, more tangible problems with the vaccine, not least the challenges of transporting something that would need to be kept below minus 70 degrees centigrade. And that's just one of the many reasons why we're actually going to be investing in multiple vaccine candidates. We are going to need more than one. We're hedging their bets essentially as a country. And I think that's quite a smart move because there's going to be benefits and downsides to all the vaccines that get approved in the end.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Rick, following the Pfizer announcement, the Australian government said that it had purchased some doses, so can you tell me about that and what the Health Minister has promised?

RICK:

Yes, so Australian officials, under the oversight of Health Minister Greg Hunt, immediately secured 10 million doses of the candidate vaccine from Pfizer and its German partner, Biotech. And Greg Hunt told reporters last Wednesday that the Biotech candidate vaccine is one of just two that has been given what they call ‘provisional determination’ by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which allows it to be fast tracked.

Archival Tape -- Greg Hunt

“It essentially expedites the process and brings critical medicines or vaccines to Australians at a faster rate than would otherwise be the case but with an absolute premium on safety.”

RICK:

The other vaccine that had been developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca was previously considered a frontrunner.

RUBY:

Right. And we've spoken before about the Oxford University AstraZeneca vaccine. So where is that at the moment?

RICK:

Actually, this week, CSL, which is the old Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, has actually begun manufacturing doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca Coronavirus vaccine, despite it not yet being approved. And it's still going through the Phase three clinical trials. But the key to that being, we will have some doses ready to go when it clears all of those clinical hurdles. And while those two drugs are on the fast track, Australia has so far purchased 134.8 million doses of four vaccines, including 40 million shots of the Novavax drug and 51 million units of another developed by University of Queensland researchers in combination with CSL.

Archival Tape -- Greg Hunt

“So we have not just enough for the entire Australian population, we have enough for the entire Australian population three times over because…”

RICK:

Of each of the potential vaccines none have yet cleared the final hurdle that would allow them to be administered, but they will all likely serve a different purpose. So some, for instance, are more effective in vulnerable populations such as the elderly or people with softened immunity. Similarly, each has its challenge. So, for example, Australia does not currently have the ability to manufacture these messenger RNA vaccines like Pfizer's drug or AstraZeneca’s. There is also the matter of distribution. So the Pfizer vaccine’s big flaw is that it needs to be kept well below freezing at all times until you're about to inject it into a person.

RUBY:

So how is that being navigated? What's the solution to that problem?

RICK:

For the Department of Health Deputy Secretary John Skerrett, who leads the Health Products Regulation Group that takes in the TGA within the Department of Health, told reporters that as part of the vaccine research, Pfizer has developed what are essentially very sophisticated eskies packed with dry ice.

Archival Tape -- John Skerrett

“And they actually last for 14 days and they can be filled, refilled twice. So, without the need to connect to electricity or anything like that, these eskies, with the two refills, gives you a month and a half of cold chain protection.”

RICK:

Even in a country the size of Australia, you can get anywhere much quicker than that. So that's really kind of an old school, but also fairly high tech solution to what is a logistical problem. There are a few other unknowns as well. Like we don't know how long any vaccine will offer protection for whether it's a year, five years, a lifetime. And we also don't know how it might affect different sections of society. You know, the very old, the very young, for example. We just don't know the answer to these questions. But even after they're given approval, clinical trials will still be ongoing in what they call phase four, which is monitoring people who've now had the injections in the mainstream population.

RUBY:

OK, so as it stands, though, Rick, there are four different vaccines that are all contenders for us here in Australia. And it seems likely that we'll probably be using a kind of a mixture of all of these different types. What is the timeline, though, for any of them to actually be delivered?

RICK:

Well, sooner than we may think at this point, hopefully. So Australia is currently the vice chair of the group of the international drug regulator that meets often, as Professor Skerritt was saying, through analyst late night video conferences to discuss the safety and efficacy of all of these emerging candidate vaccines, not just the four Australia's purchased, but at least a dozen others. And, you know, he was saying by the end of January, we'll be in a position to be able to give the first couple of vaccines final approval.

RUBY:

That is soon.

RICK:

Yeah, that's what two months away, really? Two and a half. And he was saying that these are not the only two candidates. You know, there are, you know, at least a dozen companies that they've already been meeting with at the TGA and the Department of Health and to discuss in depth these kinds of options that are emerging. And he confirmed, you know, we actually do expect that there would be a need for a number of different vaccines to cover the market and cover different groups of patients. But he did say that Greg Hunt's estimate of us all, you know, Australians starting to be injected from March next year is accurate.

And while the vaccine won't be mandatory, Greg Hunt did say that he hopes that every Australian that chooses to be vaccinated for the Coronavirus and, you know, listening to press interviews with the CEO of a German company, Biotech, you know, they were the ones that really led all this. Pfizer partnered with them and he is extremely confident that this Pfizer-Biotech candidate will - I hesitate saying it out loud - but will stop the pandemic, and particularly if we get to that 70, 80 per cent immunisation rate around the world by the end of next year. That's a huge operation, and in London, in England, for example, they're talking about mobilising the army, commandeering cathedrals, stadiums, conference centres to turn into mass immunisation centres, and they'll draught nurses and GPs to go and ban them. It's a massive undertaking, but it's an important one.

And I keep saying it every time I do these stories about vaccines. Yes, the Coronavirus has been horrific. It has kind of upended the world and shown us where all these systemic flaws are. But how cool is science that we have, you know, turned around what looks to be a very effective vaccine in 10 months for the Pfizer candidate. I mean, they started work just as this pathogen had left Wuhan, China, back before we realised how big of a deal this would actually be.

And they did it and they did it with a platform that has never been a vaccine before and that will live on long after Coronavirus because it is such an easy platform to work with in terms of copying the relevant elements of, you know, RNA strand for different viruses and putting that it's almost like plug and play. Just pop it in the platform and away you go. You teach the body to defend itself. This is bigger than space race and it's not founded on competition. This is a huge global cooperative effort and it kind of restores your faith in humanity just a little bit. And I know there's a lot going on. But it's a nice start.

RUBY:

Rick, thank you so much for your time today.

RICK:

Thanks, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

The coronavirus cluster in Adelaide is continuing to grow, with 23 people now confirmed to have tested positive. South Australia’s Premier Steven Marshall confirmed the virus was transferred to a cleaner in a quarantine hotel before being spread to security guards.

And President-elect Joe Biden has said more Americans will suffer if Donald Trump continues to hold up the presidential transition process and choose to play golf instead.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, see ya tomorrow.