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The Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC) applauds the US government’s efforts to host a Global COVID-19 Summit on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly next week and calls on heads of state, multilateral and regional bodies, and private-sector and non-governmental leaders to take this moment to take a fresh look at how to tackle the pandemic globally and solve the inequities that have plagued the COVID-19 response the past year and a half.GHTC is committed to the shared targets of vaccinating the world, saving lives now, and building back better. Within these priorities, we call on summit stakeholders to commit to bolstering global investments in robust surveillance and data sharing, including for genomic sequencing; increased testing and analysis to detect emerging variants; and research and development (R&D), including supporting clinical trials for “wave 2” therapeutic and vaccine candidates as well as increasing regional manufacturing capacities for all medical countermeasures. GHTC also supports the creation of a global health security financial intermediary fund that can be leveraged to mobilize resources for immediate COVID-19 response needs and bolster research, development, and manufacturing capabilities in every region as part of longer-term pandemic preparedness systems strengthening.GHTC stands ready to convene partners to assess gaps in the upstream R&D aspects of the COVID-19 response, to remove policy barriers, and to enable product developers to advance progress on delivering and deploying technologies fit for purpose for the lowest-resource settings. We are also committed to leveraging our platform to elevate perspectives of national and regional stakeholders from lower- and middle-income countries to ensure global investments in R&D and manufacturing capacity strengthening are driven in a way best suited to strengthening pandemic preparedness in each local context.Finally, we call for the establishment of a global envoy or focal point to galvanize support and align efforts when a new COVID-19 road map for ending the pandemic is developed, and to ensure accountability and global representation. The global community must come together and hold each other accountable to eliminate every bottleneck slowing down a truly global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. No one is safe until everyone is safe, and tangible collective action is the only way we will meet the targets of vaccinating the world, saving lives, and building back better.

Interested in more global health innovation news? Every week GHTC scours media reports worldwide to deliver essential global health R&D news and content to your inbox. Sign up now to receive our weekly R&D News Roundup email. Moderna and Novavax are both developing vaccines for combined protection against COVID-19 and the flu, the companies announced last week. Moderna is working on a single-dose vaccine that combines a booster dose of its authorized COVID-19 and a booster of its furthest along experimental flu shot. Novavax has launched an early-stage trial for a combined flu and COVID-19 vaccine composed of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, not yet authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration, and its influenza shot NanoFlu, along with an adjuvant or vaccine booster. The Novavax trial will be conducted in Australia among 640 healthy adults between the ages of 50 and 70 who have been previously infected with COVID-19 or given an authorized COVID-19 vaccine at least eight weeks prior to the study. Results are expected in the first half of 2022.The COVAX vaccine-sharing facility’s global vaccine deliveries will fall almost 30 percent below its original target of distributing 2 billion doses in 2021, the initiative’s leaders estimate. The new supply forecast predicts another 1.1 billion doses will be made available this year, in addition to the 330 million already released for delivery before the end of August, for an estimated total of 1.4 billion vaccine deliveries by the end of 2021. The shortfall is the result of a variety of factors, including restrictions on exports from the Serum Institute of India, problems increasing manufacturing at vaccine facilities, and lags in regulatory approval, according to COVAX leaders. Under the most likely forecast, COVAX would reach 2 billion available doses between January and February of 2022.COVID-19 has set back the fight against other global health challenges like HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria, according to a report released by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Compared to 2019, the number of people tested and treated for TB fell by about 18 percent in 2020—and the number of people treated for extensively drug-resistant TB by 37 percent. The number of people who sought testing for HIV declined by 22 percent, and those opting for HIV prevention services fell by 12 percent. However, the report also noted the adoption of innovations, from dispensing multi-month supplies of TB and HIV drugs to using digital tools to monitor TB treatment, adopted by health agencies and ministries around the world, which will hopefully outlast the pandemic.

Interested in more global health innovation news? Every week GHTC scours media reports worldwide to deliver essential global health R&D news and content to your inbox. Sign up now to receive our weekly R&D News Roundup email.Pfizer and Merck have both announced the launch of trials for their oral antiviral candidates to combat COVID-19, the companies stated separately last week. Pfizer’s phase 2/3 trial will enroll non-hospitalized, low-risk adults who have tested positive for COVID-19 to evaluate its pill, PF-07321332, alongside a low dose of ritonavir, a medication widely used in combination treatments for HIV. The antiviral treatment is designed to block the activity of a key enzyme that is needed for the coronavirus to multiply. Merck’s trial will enroll adults who live in the same household as someone diagnosed with symptomatic coronavirus infection to evaluate molnupiravir for the prevention of COVID-19. A separate trial is underway to test the drug’s use in treating non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Molnupiravir is designed to introduce errors into the RNA of the virus that eventually prevent it from replicating.A phase 3 trial for SK Bioscience and GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) COVID-19 vaccine began last week, seeking to enroll around 4,000 people around the world. In phase 1/2 data, the adjuvanted vaccine candidate induced strong neutralizing antibody responses to COVID-19. The phase 3 trial will compare results of the vaccine candidate against those of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine, making it one of the first global phase 3 trials to actively evaluate two different COVID-19 vaccine candidates against each other for safety and immunogenicity. Results from the trial are expected in the first half of 2022, and SK Bioscience, GSK, and supporting partners hope to begin supply of the vaccine through the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility in that same period, depending on data and regulatory review.The World Health Organization (WHO) and Germany last week launched a pandemic intelligence hub to help governments identify future pandemics at an earlier stage and improve monitoring of new variant strains of COVID-19. The hub, based in Berlin, is designed to streamline global data-sharing by making it easier for governments to compare notes on emerging infectious diseases and pull in additional relevant information on travel patterns, trade routes, or human-animal interactions in agriculture. While governments and non-governmental organizations are collecting more and more information relevant to public health, databases rarely allow easy international comparisons, according to WHO. Improving global tracking of COVID-19 variants via genome sequencing is likely to be the new hub’s initial priority.