Good Day BIO: Asian governments race to avoid last place in COVID-19 response

As the Olympics come to a close, new COVID-19 cases have hit a record high in Tokyo and elsewhere in Asia. Where does this leave COVAX and the fight against COVID-19 in the region? 

While many Asian countries effectively managed the first global wave of COVID-19 through strong public health measures,they are now being tested by the Delta variant amid lagging vaccine rollouts in the region. Tokyo, as one example, is in a “state of emergency” with Delta causing spread “unseen in the past," according to Japan’s Health Minister Norihisa Tamura.

Lockdowns and restrictions are becoming the new normal. As Japan’s Medical Association has called for a country-wide lockdown, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam recently imposed new lockdown restrictions due to lethargic vaccination campaigns that have not contained the spread of COVID-19.

Regional vaccine manufacturing is rising. South Korea is in talks with Pfizer and Moderna to produce their vaccines in the country, while Vietnam is in talks with the Biden administration to locally produce mRNA vaccines, potentially in the fourth quarter of this year or in early 2022.

Meanwhile, the addition of the Chinese vaccines to the COVAX portfolio is expected to help address supply delays. Two major Chinese pharmaceutical firms—Sinopharm and Sinovac—signed agreements with COVAX for the purchase of 550 million vaccines by the first half of 2022. Gavi CEO Dr. Seth Berkley described the agreements as "options in the face of constraints such as supply delays." 

The bottom line: COVAX “is a multilateral opportunity” that must continue to be invested in by governments and the biotechnology industry, says Xiaoqing Boynton, BIO’s Senior Director of International Affairs. Effective vaccine distribution and production in Asia will be key to overcoming the pandemic and the full recovery of the regional and global economy.

More Reading: Japan’s pharmaceutical and biotech sector is falling behind its major competitors due to an increasingly onerous policy environment and inefficiencies in its health care system, writes Joe Damond, BIO’s Deputy Chief Policy Officer and EVP for International Affairs, for the World Economic Forum. Read it here.

More Health Care News:

The Washington Post (Opinion): As bad as COVID-19 has been, a future pandemic could be even worse—unless we act now
“Our federal government is responsible for defending the United States against future threats. That’s why President Biden has asked Congress to fund his plan to build on current scientific progress to keep new infectious-disease threats from turning into pandemics like COVID-19,” writes Dr. Eric Lander, President Biden’s science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

As a child, Melodie Narain-Blackwell battled digestive symptoms—which triggered anxiety, fear, and a lot of questions. After being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease as an adult, she began sharing her journey on social media—and she was overloaded with messages from other people of color battling Crohn’s.

She started Color of Crohn’s and Chronic Illness, a non-profit devoted to providing information and advocacy for BIPOC patients affected by digestive illnesses.

Watch Melodie tell her story at I am BIO.

Let’s close the week with some inspiring words about the promise of America’s biotech sector—and a warning about what will happen if policymakers don’t embrace it. 

“Biotechnology, at its core, is about the elegant repair of genetic malfunction and the careful enhancement of the genome to remedy an industrial society’s most desperate ills, from climate change to zoonotic disease threats,” says Dr. Jeremy Levin, CEO of Ovid Therapeutics and BIO’s immediate past chairman, writing for RA Capital.

“Yet, as a nation, we haven’t appreciated the importance or value of our biotechnology leadership position,”he continues, noting U.S. presidents have only recently started to “acknowledge the promise and the prominence” of the industry because China is “closing in fast.” 

Several U.S. policy proposals threaten to “undermine” America’s innovative technology sectors—such as H.R. 3, which would “significantly reduce investment in the new technologies that we need to combat not just the next pandemic, but solutions to many other diseases,” as well as the proposed waiver on vaccine IP protections, which “wouldn’t speed up global vaccination efforts but would hasten the reverse engineering of U.S. trade secrets.” 

The same goes for ag tech: Regulatory policies in China—and Mexico, as we’ve reported—have “driven down U.S. demand for genetically modified crops,” compelling many American farmers to stop adopting new technologies not approved by these markets.

The bottom line: “As China and others ‘move in fast,’ as Biden put it, we have a choice: continue to lead or be content to depend on others for the most important technological advances of the century,” says Dr. Levin.

Read the whole thing.

President Biden’s Friday: At 10:30 AM ET, he’ll deliver remarks on the July jobs report, which as of this writing economists still think is a “wild card,” reports CNBC. 

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: While you’re enjoying your weekend, the Senate is planning to vote on infrastructure before they can go on recess, reports POLITICO.