World needs better COVID vaccines, says CEPI CEO

As the world continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, several developments and challenges have come to light. Dr Richard Hatchett, the CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), has pointed out that while there has been a decrease in commercial demand for COVID-19 vaccines, the need for better vaccines still remains.

CEPI is a global partnership that is focused on developing vaccines against emerging infectious diseases.

Dr Hatchett said, “Our organization CEPI thinks - we continue to need better vaccines, vaccines that can prevent transmission, and ideally protect against not just the COVID that we have now, but that evolves in the future.”

Talking about commercial demand Dr Hatchett mentioned that commercial demand for COVID vaccines has also declined.

He added, “Drivers for vaccine development now I think is going to require continued public sector investment. We have got a program that we are funding, where we have allocated around $230 million US to develop what we are calling broadly protective coronavirus vaccines. These will be vaccines that protect against COVID, but also against SARS and MERS and other coronaviruses.”

Dr Hatchett has also highlighted the importance of understanding the nature of the virus and how it can mutate. He believes current vaccines are really good at preventing severe disease and death. Still, they are not preventing transmission and every new case of COVID presents an opportunity for the virus to mutate and evolve.

He said, “We are seeing continued evolution of the virus so we have to update the vaccines. I think that's what we are anticipating likely to be the case with COVID as we continue to live with this virus in future years.”