Clearly Coronavirus is a plague in which anyone at all can be infected and from which many people die. The World response to its arrival has been very much the same as when the Black Death struck in England between 1347- 1351; dismay and lack of understanding followed by panicking isolation from others.
Currently we in the London area have been most affected by Coronavirus with more infections and deaths than in any other part of the country. It was probably thus in 1347 – 51 as well. Then wealthy people fled to their country estates and I suppose the modern equivalent may be celebrities like Emma Thompson, who in February, having moved to Venice after BREXIT, rushed back to one of her homes in Argyll, Scotland. Personally, I know of only one friend and his family who have left London for their second home in Norfolk but that was planned already. However, there is no escaping this viral curse; it is everywhere - throughout the country and the world. Sadly, it looks like it is here to stay as well.
It is clear also that there will be no short-term fix and we will have to live with it – perhaps having to deal with it in the same way as measles, mumps, chicken pox and other mainly childhood diseases. It will take months to get a vaccine universally available which will help to stop us getting the disease. As for the magic bullet that will cure Coronavirus, that seems light years away.
Defeating viruses is a huge mountain for modern medical science to conquer. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 and that wonderful revelation saved so many people during the Second World War and since. But penicillin/antibiotics sort out bacteria and bacteria are not viruses. Any GP will tell us that antibiotics are utterly useless against viruses. Have we found a cure for the virus of the common cold virus yet? No, we have not but scientists are quite optimistic with regard to Coronavirus.
Results from previous research into cures for viruses like HIV, Ebola and Sars have been an invaluable starting point though. Looking at the internet there seem to be many, many therapies being tested in various laboratories. The good news is that the scientists most involved seem to think that they will find a vaccine which will work and be safe to use within a short time. Thereafter it is a manufacturing matter. Let’s hope they are right.
Getting a treatment to combat the COVID-19 virus is now the most urgent mission of World medical research. Across the planet laboratories are working flat-out on it.
Again, good news, Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health, announced last week that trials of possible vaccines would begin last Thursday. I note that they have. He cited one drug, which has been named ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (it trips off the tongue eh!), developed by scientists at Oxford University, which is reported to have an 80 per cent success rate. Wow, that’s great – let us hope we are not disappointed. Imperial College London, has also developed a vaccine using something called RNA.
Hancock admitted it was still uncertain science and that normally it would have taken years to reach this stage. After that the Minister said: “We'll invest in manufacturing capability, so that if any vaccine safely works, then we can make it available for the British people as soon as humanly possible." That may take a while though.
In Europe there are similar gigantic efforts being undertaken. Cure Vac, a German company is preparing to trial something called mRNA. Takis Biotech in Italy is hoping to begin testing its own DNA-developed vaccine soon and in The Netherlands a company is recruiting people to trial its product based on the BCG vaccine which is normally given to teenage children. The French are pinning hopes on Hydroxychloroquine, a malaria medication which in laboratory trials apparently seems to slow down and perhaps arrest infections.
Further abroad drugs like Camostat Mesylate produced by Japanese company Ono Pharmaceutical, Remdesivir manufactured by Gilhead Sciences in California and a pill called Avigan made by Fujifilm in Japan are all complex chemical compounds being hurriedly checked to see if they can work.
Making use of so-called monoclonal antibodies genetically produced from people who have survived the virus is another approach being pursued by Regeneron an American bio-technology company based near New York. In a previous post on 13 April I talked about Inovio, a research laboratory in San Diego, California. Dr Kate Broderick, Inovio’s Head of Research and Development, claims that after the Chinese released the DNA sequence of COVID-19 by putting it on-line, they set to work immediately. Very quickly after that a trial vaccine was designed and put into manufacture. The so-called plasmid was then added to bacteria and incubators. Thereafter the DNA from the bacteria that has grown was purified which she claimed would give a pure product which can then be tested in pre-clinical testing. Then the final product will be available for human testing. Inovio believes that it should have that by what she said was ‘the early summer’.
In summary, it looks to me that this unprecedented and magnificent scientific push across the World will find a solution and before long too. At least thirty vaccines or therapies are being trialled now and the odds are that one will prove its worth and be safe for use too. Thus, I am increasingly optimistic that we will crack this one but we should not expect it will be available to everyone for quite a while.