Vaccine wars — the most effective vaccine may not be the vaccine you get

There is dispiriting news coming from the Oxford University Vaccine trial. A paper released last week shows that the vaccine may be only partially effective. A trial of the vaccine in monkeys did not stop any of them from catching the virus. It raises serious questions about the future of the vaccine trials and its efficacy in humans. It also raises serious questions about the politics of vaccine delivery.

However much world leaders stress that they will cooperate on a global vaccination project, previous experience suggests otherwise. There is currently a global race to be the first country to develop and vaccinate respective domestic populations. The danger for the UK is that we are significantly compromised from receiving a foreign vaccine because we chose instead to go for a domestic alternative, even if it is not as effective.

The data about the Oxford trials was published on May 13 making the UK government’s announcement of further support for the vaccine on May 17 hard to understand. Alok Sharma used the government’s daily virus briefing to announce that clinical trials of the vaccine were progressing well and therefore that the government was investing a further £84 million into the project, despite data to the contrary. Does the government know something that the wider scientific community does not, or are they simply doubling down on a vaccine they already know to be seriously compromised?

Sharma stated that “if the vaccine is successful AstraZeneca will work to make 30 million doses.” But the key question is how the government intends to measure the success of the vaccine. Will it be the prevention of transmission or the much less ambitious measure of reducing symptoms? The outcome could have profound public health implications. This looks set to be the next front in the new wave of global nationalism that Covid-19 has introduced to international relations. In the midst of Sharma’s announcement was the explicit commitment to Britain’s place at the front of the queue if the Oxford vaccine is successful.

In contrast to the Oxford project, a rival vaccine from Sinovac Biotech, a privately held Beijing based company, looks to be significantly more successful in protecting the same breed of monkeys from infection by Covid-19. Sinovac Biotech’s approach to the vaccine is far more low tech than Oxford’s but appears so far to be more effective in preventing new cases of the disease.

These are early days but if the data are correct and China is first to develop a truly successful vaccine, what does that mean for the UK in terms of widespread vaccination? Which countries would China allow priority access to a Chinese vaccine? The slow emergence of a Cold War with China has been a matter of debate for some time. It flared up most recently in the UK over the controversial decision to ignore our US allies by allowing Huawei to build part of our 5G communications network.

During the past six years, the global shift has been away from internationalism and a concomitant decline in multilateralism, particularly on the part of the US and accelerated under Trump’s presidency. Notably both the US and China have been reluctant to commit to multilateral approaches to Covid-19 vaccine development, despite the protestations of the WHO. Both countries have drafted a mix of domestic pharmaceutical companies and the military to solve the problem on a domestic basis.

The Huawei decision is perhaps a warning of the future vaccine conflicts to come and the decisions Britain will have to make if China’s Sinovac Biotech is the first to produce an effective vaccine. If the Oxford university vaccine proves to only be partially effective compared to China’s alternative, what decision will the UK government make? It lays open a hitherto unexplored area of security policy. Do we choose to use a domestically produced, but potentially sub-optimal vaccine or do we choose to realign our alliance system towards China to ensure preferential access to the gold standard vaccine? We don’t yet find ourselves in such an invidious position but the potential for it is staring us in the face.