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Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day seventy since

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Speaker 1: coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story. Drug

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Speaker 1: makers around the world are racing to develop an effective

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Speaker 1: vaccine for COVID nineteen and stand the outbreak, but some

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Speaker 1: countries are vying for early and in some cases, exclusive

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Speaker 1: access to a vaccine that could leave poor countries behind,

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Speaker 1: and the prospect of a two tiered world is sparking outrage.

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Speaker 1: But first, here's what happened today. Wall Street is trying

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Speaker 1: to get people back to the office, but with lots

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Speaker 1: of room to spread out. Big banks are opening up

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Speaker 1: huge offices meant for thousands, with plans to staff them

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Speaker 1: with a small fraction of that number. Some displaced employees

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Speaker 1: will relocate to suburban outposts, and some will work from

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Speaker 1: home indefinitely. JP Morgan Chase expects to keep its offices

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Speaker 1: half full at most for the foreseeable future, and Goldman

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Speaker 1: Sachs is reopening its Paris office but maxing out at

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Speaker 1: staff on any given day. City Group is considering leasing

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Speaker 1: offices in New Jersey and the New York suburbs of

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Speaker 1: Westchester County and Long island in Brazil, which has become

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Speaker 1: a coronavirus hotspot. The Health ministry released a protocol recommending

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Speaker 1: all COVID nineteen patients use chloroquine from the first day

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Speaker 1: of symptoms. The government also recommends the use of sister

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Speaker 1: drug hydroxy chloroquine, along with the antibiotic azithromyasin. Clinical trials

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Speaker 1: have failed to show that chloroquine is effective for fighting

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Speaker 1: COVID nineteen, and trials were halted when patients developed potentially

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Speaker 1: fatal irregular heart rates. Since the start of a pandemic,

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Speaker 1: President Jayre Bolsonaro has often touted the antimalarial medication. Trump

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Speaker 1: has also backed it, recently, going so far as saying

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Speaker 1: he has been taking hydroxy chloroquine as a precautionary measure.

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Speaker 1: And in China, doctors are seeing signs the coronavirus may

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Speaker 1: be changing. The virus appears to manifest differently among patients

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Speaker 1: in a new cluster of cases than it did in

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Speaker 1: the original outbreak. If the pathogen is mutating in unknown ways,

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Speaker 1: it could complicate efforts to stamp it out. Patients in

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Speaker 1: this latest outbreak in northeastern China appear to carry the

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Speaker 1: virus for longer and take longer to test negative, but

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Speaker 1: scientists don't know for sure whether the virus is changing

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Speaker 1: in significant ways, or if doctors are seeing differences because

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Speaker 1: they are able to observe patients more thoroughly and from

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Speaker 1: an earlier stage than in Muhan. And now our main story,

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Speaker 1: COVID nineteen has sparked an unprecedented mobilization of researchers looking

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Speaker 1: to create a drug that can prevent the virus. Globally,

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Speaker 1: developers are working on as many as one experimental vaccines,

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Speaker 1: but as nations rushed to ease lockdowns and restart economies,

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Speaker 1: concerns are growing that some will try to secure early

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Speaker 1: supplies of a vaccine for themselves. Bloomberg reporter James Payton

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Speaker 1: recently wrote about an international organization that's aiming to improve

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Speaker 1: access to vaccines, the strongest bulwark against the spread of disease.

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Speaker 1: I spoke to him from his home in London. If

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Speaker 1: in in a COVID nineteen vaccine becomes available, what are

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Speaker 1: the current plans for how it will be made available

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Speaker 1: or distributed around the world. Yeah, well, this is one

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Speaker 1: of the key questions right now. And obviously the big

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Speaker 1: concern is that um some countries will rush ahead of

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Speaker 1: especially wealthier countries will rush ahead of poorer regions and

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Speaker 1: try to secure those vaccines supplies early. So um, right now,

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Speaker 1: there are a number of groups that are discussing various

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Speaker 1: financing tools and other measures to try to ensure that

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Speaker 1: if there is a vaccine, When there's a vaccine, hopefully

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Speaker 1: there will be UH that it will be deployed in

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Speaker 1: inequitable and you know that it will be deployed in

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Speaker 1: an equitable way and widely around the world, because that's

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Speaker 1: really the that's really the key, not just from UH

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Speaker 1: an ethical standpoint, but also from a scientific one. And

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Speaker 1: so have some vaccine makers or folks that are um

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Speaker 1: at work developing a vaccine, have they promised that some

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Speaker 1: countries will receive the vaccine first. Yeah, that's a good question.

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Speaker 1: Companies have started to talk about this issue. Astra Zeneca,

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Speaker 1: the UK pharmaceutical giant, is helping the University of Oxford

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Speaker 1: with its experimental coronavirus vaccine, and astra Zeneca has said

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Speaker 1: that it will make as many as thirty million doses

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Speaker 1: of that vaccine available to the UK by September actually

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Speaker 1: if it's If it's successful and the company has indicated

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Speaker 1: that the UK will be prioritized that the UK will

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Speaker 1: get access to this vaccine first if they are able

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Speaker 1: to successfully deliver one. Other companies to the CEO of

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Speaker 1: Santa Fee, the French pharmaceutical giant, told us recently that

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Speaker 1: the US would likely be vaccinated first because of support

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Speaker 1: it's received from the US government. But a lot of

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Speaker 1: these commitments remain vague. So so there are a number

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Speaker 1: of their number of factors that make this a tricky

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Speaker 1: question for the for the big pharmaceutical companies and the

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Speaker 1: universities working on these vaccines. So is every country just

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Speaker 1: trying to get its hands on a vaccine first or

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Speaker 1: are some countries being more collaborative. A number of countries

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Speaker 1: have pledged and have committed to making vaccines broadly and

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Speaker 1: universally available. The European Commission recently raised about eight billion

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Speaker 1: dollars to focus on universal vaccine access in other ways

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Speaker 1: of fighting COVID nineteen. So a number of world leaders

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Speaker 1: I think about a hundred and forty world leaders and

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Speaker 1: nonprofits and other groups signed signed a letter last week

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Speaker 1: calling for a so called people's vaccine to make UH

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Speaker 1: to have a free product that's available UM quickly or

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Speaker 1: for everyone. So, um, this is really heating up. Is

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Speaker 1: like a big issue for governments around the world. From

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Speaker 1: a medical perspective, what are some of the arguments for

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Speaker 1: trying to make a vaccine universally available. Yeah, it's a

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Speaker 1: good question. I talked to the CEO of A gav

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Speaker 1: Seth Berkeley, and he notes that if you have perfect

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Speaker 1: control of a virus UH in one country, but the

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Speaker 1: nation's surrounding you don't, that you're still at risk. The

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Speaker 1: virus can continue to spread. Obviously, a virus doesn't respect borders.

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Speaker 1: So if you look at other diseases, take measles for instance,

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Speaker 1: vaccine was introduced in the nineteen sixties. Decades of progress

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Speaker 1: against the highly contagious disease occurred after that. But the

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Speaker 1: w h O World Health Organization as recently as last

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Speaker 1: month reported m a significant rise in cases of measles

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Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen and warrant of another potential resurgence in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty due to unvaccinated um pockets of the of

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Speaker 1: the population. So I think that underscores the need to

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Speaker 1: immunize broadly and what can happen if you have those

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Speaker 1: kinds of immunization gaps. So that's why organizations like GAVI

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Speaker 1: are focused on, you know, getting vaccines distributed widely. Again

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Speaker 1: not just from from a moral standpoint, but they also

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Speaker 1: say it's smart science. But what are some of the

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Speaker 1: practical hurdles in achieving this goal? You know, I mentioned

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Speaker 1: there are a number of financing tools that are under consideration.

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Speaker 1: I mean, one is called an advanced market commitment, and

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Speaker 1: basically that works. The idea is that governments will and

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Speaker 1: other donors will commit funds to the vaccine makers, and

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Speaker 1: the vaccine manufacturers on the other side of the equation

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Speaker 1: will agree to provide their vaccines at prices that are

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Speaker 1: affordable and sustainable. So it gives those companies assurance and

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Speaker 1: clarity to go ahead with their developments and manufacturing plans,

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Speaker 1: and it brings relief to UH to poorer countries that

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Speaker 1: can't afford to pay the same prices as as wealthier nations.

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Speaker 1: Given the magnitude of this crisis, it will be very

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Speaker 1: difficult to to get all the parties to to line up,

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Speaker 1: but those are some of the options under consideration, and

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Speaker 1: I'd like to even dig deeper on that. In an

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Speaker 1: ideal world, obviously the vaccine would become immediately globally available

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Speaker 1: to everyone. But how do you make the decision of

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Speaker 1: if you only have a certain amount of doses or

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Speaker 1: a certain amount of vaccines, who gets those first, those

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Speaker 1: first doses. It is a really tricky question because if

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Speaker 1: you're a particular government from a political standpoint, your number

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Speaker 1: one priority is to protect your own population. But you know,

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Speaker 1: this group GAVY, for instance, is focused primarily on getting

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Speaker 1: vaccines initially to healthcare workers. But then again it raises

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Speaker 1: a question if there's a vaccine in the US or

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Speaker 1: the UK, you know, would would those citizens be prioritized

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Speaker 1: over healthcare workers in other countries? Because, uh, you know

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Speaker 1: a lot of the people involved in this effort say that,

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Speaker 1: you know, really the the effort should be to get

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Speaker 1: the vaccines to the people who are most vulnerable, wherever

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Speaker 1: they are. How will what happens with the distribution of

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Speaker 1: the coronavirus vaccine potentially affect how decisions get made about

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Speaker 1: other vaccines um either in the future or that already

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Speaker 1: it when you look back, what people in this area

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Speaker 1: are trying to avoid is what happened in two thousand

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Speaker 1: nine with the swine flu pandemic. Number of wealthy countries

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Speaker 1: rushed to reserve supplies in advance, leaving other nations behind.

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Speaker 1: And while you know a number of these wealthy countries

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Speaker 1: moved to donate doses to the developing world, critics say

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Speaker 1: that happened too slowly, and so a lot of the

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Speaker 1: experts are mindful of that and trying to avoid that

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Speaker 1: scenario now and obviously a much more severe emergency for

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Speaker 1: for the world. But you know, a lot of infectious

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Speaker 1: disease experts and others say this won't be the last

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Speaker 1: major epidemic that we're going to face. Uh. And you know, however,

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Speaker 1: the world's response to this will be, you know, will

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Speaker 1: be critical. I'm sure they'll be. Uh. More lessons learned

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Speaker 1: that can be applied to the to the significant outbreaks

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Speaker 1: of the future as well. That was James Payton in London,

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Speaker 1: and that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak

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Speaker 1: from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like the show,

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Speaker 1: please leave us a review and a rating on Apple

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Speaker 1: Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more

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Speaker 1: listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is

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Speaker 1: produced by Chauffeur Foreheads Jordan Gaspure, Magnus Hendrickson and me

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Speaker 1: Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by James Payton.

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Speaker 1: Original music by Leo sidran Our editors are Francesca Leaving

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Speaker 1: and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening one