Why use emergency when we freely offered help? Asks medical group

‘Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy CEO Azrul Mohd Khalib said the proclamation of an emergency appeared to involve harnessing the resources of the private sector, based on Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s speech on Tuesday. He said this could mean some private hospitals and medical facilities being requisitioned to increase the public health sector’s capacity for intensive care, beds and specialised personnel.

‘However, he told FMT that private healthcare stakeholders, particularly hospitals, had been trying to get some form of a public-private operational framework for Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 cooperation and funding since early 2020. “However, there has been limited movement on this issue. The latest decision must come as a shock, as the government seems to want to use emergency legislation to get what was willingly offered,” he said.’

Read here (Free Malaysia Today, Jan 14, 2021)

Sinopharm JVCo to sponsor 10,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine for Malaysian frontliners

‘China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), through GI Healthcare Resources Sdn Bhd — a joint-venture company (JVCo) with local investors — has agreed to sponsor 10,000 doses of the former's Covid-19 vaccine for Malaysian frontliners.

‘The sponsorship was agreed upon yesterday via a meeting between Malaysian officials, led by Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin and Health Minister Datuk Dr Adham Baba, and Sinopharm's chairman Liu Jingzhen via video conferencing.’

Read here (The Edge, Nov 19, 2020)

Decentralise to manage increasing cases of Covid-19 — MMA

‘Now is the time to decentralise communication channels, ensure that each state take ownership of the exploding pandemic and are able to act independently with speed in their own jurisdictions’. MMA (Malaysian Medical Association) suggests the following:

1. State Crisis Command Centres to coordinate all activities and ensure needs of the state are met on all fronts.
2. NGOs and public are coordinated to assist the state efforts.
3. All relevant data including equipment, manpower, bed strength, testing capacity etc are displayed on the State Command centre dashboard for stakeholders to coordinate, in particular to include data on shortages and needs.
4. Private sector hospitals, clinics and doctors are engaged in the fight against the pandemic.
5. For federal government to channel all support urgently including funds, resources and manpower.

Read here (Malay Mail, Oct 8, 2020)

‘The whole world is coming together’: How the race for a COVID vaccine is revolutionizing Big Pharma

‘There are few people on earth who better understand the power of vaccines—or who know more about the challenge of developing, vetting, and distributing them around the world—than [Seth] Berkley. The physician and epidemiologist presides over GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, which over the past 20 years has immunized nearly 800 million children against a host of deadly pathogens, saving millions of lives. 

‘Before becoming GAVI’s CEO in 2011, Berkley founded and led the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative—which itself was a long lesson in both perseverance and keeping one’s expectations in check. There is, after all, no vaccine yet for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, despite nearly four decades of global endeavor. Nor is there one for SARS or MERS, those two other deadly coronaviruses that have emerged in recent years—nor for Lyme disease, West Nile virus, Zika, or the common cold.

‘Yet in one striking way, the swarm of initiatives to develop vaccines against COVID is unique, says Berkley. That is in the readiness of pharmaceutical companies to stand together in one very important common cause: ensuring that when vaccines are ready, they are available to the whole world at the same time.’

Read here (Fortune, Sept 21, 2020)

China delayed releasing coronavirus info, frustrating WHO

‘Throughout January, the World Health Organization publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response to the new coronavirus. It repeatedly thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus “immediately,” and said its work and commitment to transparency were “very impressive, and beyond words.”

‘But behind the scenes, it was a much different story, one of significant delays by China and considerable frustration among WHO officials over not getting the information they needed to fight the spread of the deadly virus, The Associated Press has found.’

Read here (Associated Press, June 3, 2020)

Access to lifesaving medical resources for African countries: COVID-19 testing and response, ethics, and politics

‘Having navigated Ebola, HIV, and tuberculosis epidemics, and a range of annual, sporadic, and concurrent outbreaks, several African countries have unparalleled disease response capacity. African governments are offering rare examples of effective international cooperation on COVID-19. The African Union started early to strengthen response with readiness assessments, an emergency ministerial meeting, and a continental strategy. However, with a highly transmissible and fast spreading virus these strengths can quickly be overwhelmed.’

Read here (The Lancet, May 7, 2020)

Argentina responds boldly to coronavirus crisis

‘Despite Argentina’s fiercely divisive politics, the new President insisted on standing with leaders from across the political spectrum in a rare display of unity to announce the 19 March lockdown. The national government is working closely with state governors as well as all health providers, securing private sector cooperation without nationalization.

‘Meanwhile, the armed forces are building triage centres in case of a surge in infections while social, religious and business groups work together to deliver food to more than two million in the greater Buenos Aires area alone.’

Read here (IPS News, May 5, 2020)

US and Chinese researchers team up for hunt into Covid origins

‘Professor Ian Lipkin, director of the Centre for Infection and Immunity at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said he was working with a team of Chinese researchers to determine whether the coronavirus emerged in other parts of China before it was first discovered in Wuhan in December. The effort relies on help from the Chinese Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).’

Read here (Financial Times, April 29, 2020)

Dare to imagine the best possible new normal

‘We are at such a point in time again, when we are forced to think of ourselves as a species, and in fact, to institutionalise that fact even more thoroughly than before.

‘The added difference between 1945 and 2020 is that the pandemic should make us realise more deeply the fact that we are merely a species among other species and how species relate to each other cannot continue to be haphazard, and that the environment that supports us and that we all share is fragile. The environment has to be respected and cared for. And our existence is a shared one — within the species and among species.’

Read here (The Edge, April 29, 2020)

How India will play a major role in a Covid-19 vaccine

‘US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last fortnight that India and the US were working together to develop vaccines against the coronavirus. Mr Pompeo's remark didn't entirely come as a surprise. The two countries have run an internationally recognised joint vaccine development programme for more than three decades.

‘India is among the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines in the world. It is home to half a dozen major vaccine makers and a host of smaller ones, making doses against polio, meningitis, pneumonia, rotavirus, BCG, measles, mumps and rubella, among other diseases.’

Read here (BBC, April 27, 2020)

Is China winning? Economist special on China & Covid-19

‘China’s rulers combine vast ambitions with a caution born from the huge task they have in governing a country of 1.4bn people. They do not need to create a new rules-based international order from scratch. They might prefer to keep pushing on the wobbly pillars of the order built by America after the second world war, so that a rising China is not constrained.

‘That is not a comforting prospect. The best way to deal with the pandemic and its economic consequences is globally. So, too, problems like organised crime and climate change. The 1920s showed what happens when great powers turn selfish and rush to take advantage of the troubles of others. The covid-19 outbreak has so far sparked as much jostling for advantage as far-sighted magnanimity. Mr Trump bears a lot of blame for that. For China to reinforce such bleak visions of superpower behaviour would be not a triumph but a tragedy.’

Read here (The Economist, April 16, 2020)

WHO initiates a SOLIDARITY trial for vaccine

‘Recognising the critical importance to world health of the rapid availability and deployment of effective vaccines against COVID-19, this large, international, multi-site, individually randomised controlled clinical trial will enable the concurrent evaluation of the benefits and risks of each promising candidate vaccine within 3-6 months of it being made available for the trial.

‘Its goal is to “coordinate evaluation of the many preventive candidate SARS CoV-2 vaccines under development, to evaluate promptly, efficiently and reliably their safety and efficacy, enabling assessment of whether any are appropriate for deployment to influence the course of the pandemic”.’ 

Read here (WHO, April 9, 2020)