Developing a coronavirus vaccine needs competition as well as cooperation

Editorial: Competition can be useful, provided it is regulated for safety, and preferably when balanced by the virtues of collaboration

Universities, institutes, companies and individual scientists are all competing to get a workable, safe vaccine first (AFP/Getty)

The race to produce a vaccine against Covid-19 provides a global experiment in human welfare. A vaccine is the most promising protection against the disease in the long term. Testing, isolation and social distancing may hold it in check, but always with a risk of resurgence until there are either effective treatments or a vaccine.

Doctors are experimenting with treatments but so far – and despite claims of miracle cures, including by the president of the United States – there is not much evidence to go on.

Hence the intense interest in a possible vaccine, which works by prompting the body to build up its defences against the virus. The candidate vaccine that has attracted the most attention is being developed by the Jenner Institute and Oxford University: Professor Sarah Gilbert, lead researcher, says it has “a very strong chance of working”, and could be approved for use as early as October.

The usual timetable for developing a vaccine is more like 18 months, but this crisis could be different.

Shaun Lintern, our health correspondent, takes an in-depth look today at the work to develop at least 86 candidate vaccines around the world. His account provides some important insights into the ways in which the search for an effective and safe vaccine is being speeded up.

There is a theoretical question about whether competition or cooperation is the best route in this race. Universities, institutes, companies and individual scientists are all competing to get a workable, safe vaccine first. The prestige and financial reward of winning this race is a huge incentive, although competition also means duplicating effort, throwing money at unlikely candidates and possibly hoarding information.

At the same time, the competitors are engaged in unprecedented collaboration, forging partnerships and publishing the early results of research in order to share information. It hardly matters which approach is better, because they are all happening at once, across borders, and no authority could seek to direct either approach exclusively.

However, there may be a lesson here for those who are suspicious of drugs companies, or the profit motive, or of competition – these can all be useful, provided they are regulated for safety, and preferably when balanced by the virtues of collaboration.

We hope that Prof Gilbert’s confidence is justified, and that if her vaccine is not successful another one will be, and almost as quickly. Although we have to be prepared to discover that the search for a vaccine is more complicated: there is some evidence that people who have had Covid-19 are not immune to reinfection, in which case a vaccine, which depends on prompting the body to develop immunity, may not work.

If a successful vaccine – or treatment – is to be developed, though, it is likely to be produced as much by vigorous competition as by cooperation.