Precis

"We're optimistic and we think that we've got enough irons in the fire to solve the problem, but we certainly don't want to give false hope." Viral infectious diseases expert

Coronavirus restrictions are starting to loosen and our cities and towns are showing more signs of life than they have in months. But health authorities and the federal and state governments insist that without an effective vaccine or treatment for coronavirus, life cannot fully return to normal.

"The pressure has been enormous...in normal vaccine development you would have months to work some of these issues out. We've got days and weeks to do that instead." Professor of Virology & vaccine researcher

Australian scientists are at the forefront of this hunt for a vaccine, working around the clock on several promising contenders. The stakes are high, and the degree of difficulty is intense.

"People need to appreciate that trying to develop a vaccine in the face of a pandemic is a bit like trying to do a Houdini trick where someone puts a bag over your head so you can't see. There's much more that you don't know to what you do know." Director of Endocrinology & vaccine researcher

On Monday Four Corners takes you into their world, where they face extraordinary scientific hurdles as well as extreme moral and ethical dilemmas.

"It is cutting edge science and so we have to go carefully because we don't want anything that puts people at risk." Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

While their efforts showcase the best that science has to offer, behind their impressive endeavours is a story of missed opportunities and a lack of preparedness. Many had been warning of a likely pandemic for years, only to see resources and efforts invested elsewhere.

"We've seen our teams dissolve, disperse, expertise go overseas because the funding just wasn't able to sustain the work or a salary for any of those people. I think we've lost a lot of capability over the last couple of years." Viral infectious diseases expert

Infectious diseases experts say our ability to respond to this predictable outbreak has been undermined by funding cuts and short-term thinking.

"It's a sad reality that funding for preparedness in these areas runs on the cycle that we describe as being one of panic and then neglect." Former Secretary of the Dept of Health

In the event a vaccine is developed, some fear that individual nations may refuse to share it until their own populations have been inoculated.

"What we don't want to see is a level of vaccine nationalism, where countries basically are not prepared to contribute to the global effort...it's in nobody's interest." Former Secretary of the Dept of Health

The program also explores the contentious question of who gets to profit from any future vaccine, and whether it will be made available to those least able to afford it.

"It's very easy to criticise big pharma, but to be quite blunt until someone comes up with an alternative, we have to go with what we've got." Immunologist & former Australian of the Year

As scientists race to invent and test a range of possible vaccines, those funding much of the research say we should be cautiously optimistic.

"We've never seen this level of collaboration, cooperation. We've seen unusual bedfellows. The private sector, the public sector, science, medicine, everyone coming together." Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

Episode teaser. Sydney beach and streets

Music

00:10

Newsreader: "Our great hope, a vaccine for coronavirus…"

Newsreader: "But this is a whole new kind of vaccine…"

Newsreader: "Scientists have been working frantically to try to stop the deadly illness in its tracks."

00:15

COVID-19 signage/Testing

Newsreader: "A team of Australians is trying to develop a vaccine for the virus…"

Dr. Norman Swan: "The only thing that will really allow life, as we once knew it, to resume, is a vaccine."

00:24

Music

00:34

Scientists working in lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Scientists around the world have joined an unprecedented global effort to create a COVID-19 vaccine.

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 Vaccine Project, University of Queensland: There's no race

00:36

Prof. Paul Young 100%

between those of us designing vaccines. The race is on for all of us against the virus.

00:44

Scientists working in lab

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS:  We've never seen this level of collaboration, cooperation. We've seen unusual bedfellows – the private sector,

00:50

Halton 100%

the public sector, science, medicine – everyone coming together.

00:57

Scientists working in lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: But there is no guarantee of success and the challenges, both scientific and ethical, are enormous.

PROFESSOR NIKOLAI PETROVSKY, VACCINE RESEARCHER, FLINDERS UNIVERSITY: People need to appreciate that trying to develop a vaccine in the face of a pandemic,

01:02

Petrovsky 100%

is a bit like trying to do a Houdini trick where someone puts a bag over your head so you can't see.

01:17

Scientists working in lab

JENNIFER TIERNEY, MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES, AUSTRALIA: We need a systemic approach

01:23

Tierney 100%

that actually means fair and equitable pricing at the end of the day on what should be a public good.

01:28

Vaccine preparation

PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER, IMMUNOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: It's very easy to criticise big pharma, but to be quite blunt, until someone comes up with an alternative, we have to go with what we've got.

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Tonight on Four Corners, the race for a remedy.

01:33

McNeill to camera in lab. Super:
SOPHIE MCNEILL

With more than 100 in development, we investigate the global efforts to find a COVID-19 vaccine, and the battle to ensure that if  scientists are successful, it doesn’t just go to the highest bidder.

01:50

GFX Title:
INJECTION OF HOPE

Music

02:05

Grounds of University of Queensland including Molecular Biosciences Building

02:15

Prof. Young enters lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: These days, the lights are always on in the molecular bioscience labs at the University of Queensland.

02:27

Prof. Young 100%. GFX Super:
Professor Paul Young
Vaccine project co-leader
University of Queensland

Professor Paul Young is one of the leaders of the UQ team.

02:37

Prof. Young in lab with colleague

He and his colleagues have spent nearly every waking moment since January working on their COVID-19 vaccine.

02:48

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: It's been 24/7 essentially, with everybody in the team working very hard to get to where we are currently, as quickly as we can. So, lots of weekends, in fact, all weekends and most evenings.

02:57

Prof. Young 100%

There's been a lot of time spent together. I think we probably know each other better now than we ever have done.

03:09

Scientists in lab

What has amazed me, even with the 24/7 load that the whole team is carrying, we're still buoyed, we're still excited,

03:14

Prof. Young 100%

the program is still going forward with full enthusiasm from everybody.

03:21

Scientists in lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: UQ’s vaccine project is seen as the most advanced in Australia and the team is feeling the weight of responsibility to deliver.

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: The pressure has been enormous.

In normal vaccine development, you would have months to work some of these issues out. We've got days and weeks to do that, instead. The pressure certainly has felt the

03:25

Prof. Young 100%

need for us to ensure that our vaccine does make it through, into clinical use, is one that we feel almost every day.

03:47

Scientists in lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The UQ project is largely funded by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations or CEPI – a group co-founded by billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.

03:57

Bill Gates TED Talk. Super:
March 2015

BILL GATES: If anything kills more than 10 million people in the next few decades it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus.

04:07

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: In 2015, after the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Gates warned that a global pandemic was looming – calling for an urgent overhaul of infectious disease research and vaccine development.

04:19

Gates on World Economic Forum panel

CEPI was formally launched at the 2017 World Economic Forum, with nearly half a billion dollars of investment.

04:35

BILL GATES: Everyone has really taken a leap of faith to pull this together…

04:43

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Australia has contributed 14 million dollars.

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: CEPI was created

04:47

Halton 100%

based on concerns that people had about the global response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which I'm sure most people remember, and we didn't have vaccines that were ready to go at a time of great crisis, and many lives were lost as a consequence. So a group of global health experts, together with some people from the business community, got together to say, well, how can we prevent that kind of thing happening again?

04:53

Halton 100%. GFX Super:
Jane Halton
Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: CEPI is chaired by Australian Jane Halton, a former Secretary of the Department of Health.

05:16

Halton working on laptop

When she was appointed three years ago, one of her priorities was a project called 'Disease X – preparing for the next pandemic'.

05:26

Halton 100%

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: What CEPI did was look around the world, thinking about this challenge of Disease X, to see who the best partners would be.

05:40

University of Queensland

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: One of the Disease X projects CEPI funded was at the University of Queensland, where researchers were working on new technology which could be used in a pandemic.

05:47

Prof. Young in lab

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: We signed up as a university, and certainly, a group working on this particular, pathogen issue,

06:02

Prof. Young 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG
COVID-19 vaccine project,
University of Queensland

the whole idea of developing vaccines, Disease X, and, being ready to deploy our particular technology for an emerging threat.

06:07

UQ Molecular Biosciences. Super:
January 2020

Newsreader: Chinese health authorities are still working to identify the virus behind a pneumonia outbreak in the central city of Wuhan.

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: With 14 million dollars from CEPI, the work was well underway when the first reports of a viral outbreak started coming out of Wuhan in China.

06:16

Newsreader:  China is battling a new and rapidly spreading respiratory virus…

Newsreader:  In the Chinese city of Wuhan, may be a new type of coronavirus.

06:35

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: The agreement with CEPI

06:46

Prof. Young 100%

provided funding for us to expand our research team. So we essentially doubled, maybe even tripled, the size of the team so that we could move rapidly towards the development of the vaccine.

06:47

Halton 100%. Super:
JANE HALTON
Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: So there are a number of candidates that we're funding as part of our work in relation to COVID-19 that actually haven't yet generated a vaccine for use in humans.

06:59

But it is cutting edge science and so we have to go carefully because we don’t want to do something that puts people at risk.

07:08

COVID-19 animation

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The virus that causes COVID-19 is covered in distinctive spike proteins that it uses to infect cells. UQ’s vaccine uses a genetically engineered protein, like the spike from COVID -19, which the body recognises as an intruder and starts fighting. What makes it unique is the team’s ground-breaking invention called a ‘molecular clamp’ – which helps the spike hold its shape to more effectively mimic the structure of the virus surface.

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND:  Our clamp is sort of like a bulldog clip that holds that together

07:18

Prof. Young 100%

and ensures that the right protein in the right structure is presented to the immune system as a vaccine.

07:57

Prof. Purcell 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL
Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty Institute

PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL, Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty Institute: It's a concept that's been around for a little bit, but the way that they've done it is a world first.

08:03

Scientists in lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Tests on mice have shown increased antibodies in those given the vaccine.

08:10

Prof. Purcell 100%

PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL, Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty InstitutE: So, the immunity generated by the UQ candidate in mice, in the first test, was astounding.

08:19

So, in mice it's doing what we want, it's making the right kind of antibodies and it was a great joy, brought a smile to a lot of people's faces, I think.

08:26

Scientists in lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: While the results in mice are promising – this technology has never been used in humans.  Only about six percent of vaccines that make it to clinical trials turn into commercial products.

08:37

Frazer 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER
Immunologist, University of Queensland

IAN FRAZER, IMMUNOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: It may be a problem for the University of Queensland vaccine because it's a protein vaccine and not a live virus.

08:54

Scientists in lab

We might end up with a vaccine which gives us really good antibody responses, which is what we'd like to see.

09:00

Frazer 100%

But in the long run, the antibody doesn't last and in a year's time there's no antibody there and we become vulnerable to the virus again, or we might be partially protected, but still able to spread the virus.

09:05

Geelong drone shots

Music

09:17

Driving to biosecurity lab

09:31

Dr Drew in car driving to lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: This is the CSIRO high-tech biosecurity lab in Geelong, one of the few facilities globally that can do advanced animal trials with dangerous pathogens. It’s playing a critical role in worldwide hunt to find a COVID-19 vaccine.

09:45

Drew 100%

DR TREVOR DREW, Director, Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, CSIRO: Our facility is really very rare in the world. There's only about half a dozen facilities of our type.

10:10

GFX Super:
Doctor Trevor Drew
Director, Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness CSIRO

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Dr Trevor Drew is the director of the lab.

10:17

Scientists dress in hazard suits and enter lab

DR TREVOR DREW, Director, Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, CSIRO: Our people dress up in a full suit, with its own separate air supply. They come out of the laboratory and go through a chemical shower in their suits. This is probably the highest level of containment that exists anywhere in the world.

10:23

Lab signage. Scientists in lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Two international COVID vaccine teams funded by CEPI are relying on the facility to carry out animal testing.

11:06

Drew 100%

DR TREVOR DREW, Director, Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, CSIRO: The Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness has been working on two different vaccines, one from Inovio in the United States and another one from Oxford University in the UK.

22:29

Oxford lab

Music

11:42

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The Oxford University vaccine uses a harmless

11:48

COVID animation

virus usually found in chimpanzees to carry the genetic code for the spike protein into the body, to try and stimulate an immune response. This particular type of vaccine has never been licensed for widespread commercial human use.

11:50

Halton 100%. Super:
JANE HALTON
Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

JANE HALTON, Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations: Look, my attitude is we should use everything at our disposal now to try and find a way out of the crisis that the globe is currently facing and if that's new science, which we are trying out, that's fine.  What we have to do is to make sure that we test things properly, that we make sure they're safe and we make sure that they are effective.

12:15

Time-lapse. CSIRO lab

Music

12:39

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The CSIRO lab uses ferrets in its animal testing, because they have similar respiratory systems to humans. Dr Drew’s team injected the ferrets with the Oxford vaccine.

12:44

Oxford University

But before all the animal testing was complete,

12:58

Human vaccine trial. Super:
23 April 2020

Oxford announced it was starting phase one human trials.

13:02

Music

13:08

DR ROB GRENFELL, DIRECTOR OF HEALTH AND BIOSECURITY, CSIRO: When Oxford announced that they were starting their phase one trials and we're thinking

13:17

Grenfell 100%

"We've only just immunised our ferrets," I'm going, "Wow!"

13:21

Scientist in lab

They know that both the ferrets and the monkeys had no adverse effects from the vaccine. So that's one step to move to humans. But I must say that is certainly, again, this is new country, a new territory,

13:25

Grenfell 100%. Super:
DR ROB GRENFELL
Director of Health and Biosecurity, CSIRO

and there must have been a very strong case for them to actually allow that one through. Now, I wasn't a party to any of those discussions, but you can probably gather, I'm actually nervous about this, but I also have a lot of faith in the checks and balances and the systems that we actually use.

13:37

Drew 100%. Super:
DR TREVOR DREW
Director, Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, CSIRO

DR TREVOR DREW, Director, Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness: My personal reaction to the news that the Oxford University vaccine had moved to phase one clinical trials was actually one of huge respect and admiration for the volunteers who have stepped forward and said, "Yes, we understand the risks, but we're prepared to do this for humanity." It is just awesome. People who are prepared to put their lives on the line for the furtherment of science and the development of this vaccine.

13:53

Exterior. Alfred hospital

Music

14:27

Human vaccine trial clinic

14:34

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The first phase one human trial In Australia of a potential vaccine began two weeks ago. At this Melbourne clinic, these volunteers were injected with a vaccine made by American company Novavax. It had already finished animal trials in the US.

14:36

Music

14:58

DR PAUL GRIFFIN, INFECTIOUS DISEASE PHYSICIAN, NUCLEUS NETWORK: So phase one trial is really about confirming the safety in humans,

15:02

Griffin 100%. Super:
DR PAUL GRIFFIN
Infectious diseases physician, Nucleus Network

and then what we do is progress to a phase two trial once that safety data stacks up and is independently reviewed, and we're completely happy that it's safe and the phase two trial is still a little bit about safety but starting to get more readouts on efficacy.

15:06

Human vaccine trial clinic

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Normally, a phase one trial would take several months, but preparations for Novavax’s phase two stage are already underway.

15:20

DR PAUL GRIFFIN, INFECTIOUS DISEASE PHYSICIAN, NUCLEUS NETWORK: If we get the, the safety signals that we need,

15:36

Griffin 100%

so that the vaccine is definitely safe, the phase two will start really quickly. So essentially around the six-week mark, the green light will be there for the phase two

15:38

Human vaccine trial clinic

and that’ll start as well.

15:47

Halton 100%. Super:
JANE HALTON
Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: So, this is where being able to do things in parallel, as we've already talked about, cutting down the unnecessary time in the development process is our objective.  It is not our objective to cut corners on safety.

15:51

China. Human vaccine trial clinic

16:05

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: China is at the forefront of human trials, with five teams from biotechs and state institutions testing their vaccines.

16:10

CanSinoBIO building

CanSino Biologics, which has a similar vaccine to Oxford, announced promising results after successfully testing it on 108 volunteers.

16:24

Frazer 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER
Immunologist, University of Queensland

PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER, IMMUNOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: China doesn't have the best of reputation for making pharmaceutical products. They had a big scandal with vaccines a couple of years ago, where they were making vaccines, which were not what they were supposed to be and weren't working.

16:36

So that I would imagine that given China's current sensitivity about its role in the spread of the coronavirus, they're going to be very careful about making sure that any product that they produce is tested rigorously to make sure that it's safe.

16:50

Halton 100%

JANE HALTON, Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations: Now I have great confidence in the global regulators. They, more than anybody else, know the consequences of allowing a product for broad use if it is not safe. They have seen those cases, they remember them very, very well, and I am absolutely confident they do not want to see that happen.

17:07

USA. Ambulance/Hospital interior

17:26

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: In America, some members of Congress are calling for a truly radical approach – so-called challenge trials in humans, in which volunteers would be given a potential vaccine and then deliberately infected with COVID-19 to see if it works.

17:36

Purcell 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL
Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty Institute

PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL, Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty Institute: That is really going down a path where not many people have gone before.  I think that purposely challenging people is going to be quite a difficult thing to accept ethically.

17:59

File footage. China. SARS

Music

18:13

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The deadly outbreak in 2003 of SARS – another type of coronavirus, should have been the world’s wake up call. With fears of a pandemic, scientists were tasked to come up with a vaccine.

18:25

Aerial. Flinders University

Adelaide’s Flinders University was part of the global effort.

18:43

Petrovsky 100%

PROFESSOR NIKOLAI PETROVSKY, VACCINE RESEARCHER, FLINDERS UNIVERSITY: It was difficult because we hadn't worked with coronaviruses before. We didn't really know, you know, can we make a vaccines against a coronavirus? You know, what part of the virus should we be targeting? So, we were flying blind.

18:51

GFX Super:
Professor Nikolai Petrovsky
Vaccine researcher
Flinders University

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Professor Nikolai Petrovsky’s SARS vaccine work was funded by the National Institutes of Health in the United States. The research showed how unpredictable and slow vaccine development can be.

19:06

Petrovsky 100%

PROFESSOR NIKOLAI PETROVSKY, VACCINE RESEARCHER, FLINDERS UNIVERSITY: There were some surprises, and the particular one that really set us back was that the initial vaccines that were developed were actually causing the virus to become actually more lethal, and making – the animals at least – get sicker than the animals that had never received the vaccine. I mean that's the worst possible outcome.

19:22

Time lapse Flinders University

Ultimately, we were able to show that, yes, we could fix that problem with our technology

19:48

Petrovsky 100%

and obviously that took a number of years to get to that point.

19:54

Flinders University

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: SARS died out and in 2011 the US health department reallocated its funding to other areas. 

PROFESSOR NIKOLAI PETROVSKY, VACCINE RESEARCHER, FLINDERS UNIVERSITY: We were floored,

19:58

Petrovsky 100%

I mean because, you know, a lot had been invested in SARS vaccine development to that date, not just in our program but in all the programs. It would be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.

20:11

Grenfell 100%. Super:
DR ROB GRENFELL
Director of Health and Biosecurity, CSIRO

DR ROB GRENFELL, DIRECTOR OF HEALTH AND BIOSECURITY, CSIRO: If we had continued to chase a SARS or MERS vaccine, we would be in a better position, there’s no doubt. We could have done lots more work, yes.

20:22

Petrovsky in lab with vaccine

20:33

PROFESSOR NIKOLAI PETROVSKY, VACCINE RESEARCHER, FLINDERS UNIVERSITY: Looking back, we did warn everyone, that we still believed coronaviruses were going to cause another big pandemic.

20:40

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the US National Institutes of Health has come back to Professor Petrovsky with new funding – and he has now restarted where he was 10 years ago.

JANE HALTON, Secretary, Department of Health 2002 – 2014: It’s a sad reality

20:55

Halton 100%. Super:
JANE HALTON
Secretary, Department of Health 2002-2014

that funding for preparedness in these areas runs on the cycle that we describe as being one of panic and then neglect.

21:10

So that cycle of panic and neglect is something which those of us in the sector have watched now time and time again, and it is sadly the case that many projects that had promise were defunded because priorities moved elsewhere.

21:19

Scientists in lab

Music

21:34

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Leading scientists say failure to adequately fund infectious disease research has impacted Australia’s ability to respond to a pandemic. Eight positions in biosecurity research at the Geelong lab were lost in 2014 after the Abbott Government cut $111 million from the CSIRO's budget.

21:38

Drone shot. Geelong CSIRO lab

The lab’s team was gradually rebuilt, and two months ago the federal government announced a $220 million upgrade of the facility, but construction work won’t start for two years.

DR TREVOR DREW, Director of the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness: In around 2014, there were some significant cuts to CSIRO, which impacted on the research capability of ACDP.

22:03

Drew 100%. Super:
DR TREVOR DREW
Director, Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, CSIRO

The facility, ACDP, is now 35 years old. It had a projected lifespan of a hundred years, but of course it's a bit like a broom that's lasted for that length of time with five new handles and three new heads. It's something that we need to constantly do, is to replace and repair elements of the facility.

22:27

Scientists in labs

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The teams at Flinders and UQ say they were forced to conduct their animal testing overseas, because the CSIRO lab was so in demand.

22:50

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: Unfortunately, they went ahead with two vaccines from overseas that essentially used up the capacity.

23:04

Young 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG
COVID-19 vaccine project, University of Queensland

So, we had to pivot quite quickly, and look for an alternative source of animal testing.

23:13

Scientists in CSIRO lab

PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL, Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty Institute: Funding cuts and the reorganisation of funding has been very challenging for us.

23:19

Purcell 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL
Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty Institute

Basically scientists in this area – vaccine manufacture and virology in particular – were very dispirited, very disheartened. We've seen our teams dissolve, disperse, expertise, go overseas because the funding just wasn't able to sustain the work or a salary for any of those people. So yeah, I think we've lost a lot of capability over the last couple of years.

23:26

Curtis 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR NIGEL CURTIS
Infectious Diseases, Murdoch Children's Research Institute

PROFESSOR NIGEL CURTIS, Head of Infectious Diseases, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute: As researchers, we always spend a disproportion amount of our time simply trying to raise the necessary funds to do our work. One of the good things that's come out of this pandemic for those of us working in this area is that we have been able to receive funds, and I guess we only wish that some of these funds had been available earlier.

23:58

Halton 100%. Super:
JANE HALTON
Secretary, Department of Health 2002-2014

JANE HALTON, Secretary, Department of Health 2002 – 2014: So, to my mind, being able to see a regular level of funding, being committed to preparedness, is the priority and if we can come out of this experience with a greater focus on that need, I think we'll be all the better for it.

24:17

University of Queensland

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Since the pandemic, UQ’s vaccine team has received 15 million dollars from state and federal governments and last week, Canberra announced a further 13.6 million dollars for COVID-19 vaccine development in Australia.

24:32

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: Research in Australia is horribly underfunded. So, there's absolutely no doubt we don't fund basic research enough. It’s out of that basic research

24:51

Young 100%

that we are able to develop the strategies to combat these large pandemics. One of the concerns I have –  and I fear it's almost inevitable – as soon as this pandemic is over, as soon as the attention goes away from it, we'll go back to the way we were in terms of funding and so, we will end up in having a research base that again is not as well suited to respond as it perhaps could do.

25:03

Vaccine bottling production line

Music

25:29

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The development of new medical products around the world is led by private industry, with just a handful of major pharmaceutical companies dominating the market.

25:40

Music

25:51

Malpani 100%. Super:
ROHIT MALPANI
Medicine access campaigner

ROHIT MALPANI, MEDICINES ACCESS CAMPAIGNER: For companies, vaccines are not an attractive proposition; they cost a lot to develop, they're risky, they require significant clinical trials. So, for a lot of companies it's not worth the effort.

25:58

Halton 100%

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: There are many pathogens that are potentially quite risky for human populations, but sadly, because there isn't a market for any vaccines or therapeutics in respect of those pathogens, obviously there's limited amounts of work done on them.

26:09

Tierney 100%

JENNIFER TIERNEY, Médecins Sans Frontières, Australia: The pharmaceutical industry has a long tradition of putting profits over people.

26:25

Super:
JENNIFER TIERNEY
Director, Médecins Sans Frontières, Australia

Some examples of that, for instance, are they won't produce medicines that for neglected tropical diseases, because simply the people who are affected by those diseases aren't wealthy enough to pay the price that they would be demanding for those drugs.

26:30

File footage. West Africa, Ebola

Music

26:45

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The consequences of leaving it up to the market were demonstrated in the Ebola outbreak in 2014 in West Africa.

26:53

A potential vaccine had proven effective in animals almost a decade earlier, but no company had been willing to invest in its development.

ROHIT MALPANI, MEDICINES ACCESS CAMPAIGNER: So, when the Ebola outbreak, occurred, nothing was ready. There were no doses available, there was no knowledge as to whether or not the vaccine was safe or effective.

27:14

Malpani 100%

Now, eventually the vaccine was developed, it was tested and it did have a role to play in the initial outbreak, but many healthcare workers, frontline workers and people living in West Africa lost their lives, when it turns out that the vaccine could have played an important role in tamping down the outbreak at a very early stage.

27:38

Frazer 100%

PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER, IMMUNOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: Our current system is very much industry focused, patent protection on everything, return on investment, and long development times that have to be paid for.

27:55

GFX Super:
Professor Ian Frazer
Immunologist
Australian of the Year 2006

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Professor Ian Frazer is behind one of Australia’s most famous vaccine success stories.

28:05

File footage. HPV Vaccine

In 1991 he and his colleague discovered the technology behind the HPV vaccine that prevents 90 percent of cervical cancer.

28:15

All Australian teenagers are now offered the vaccine.

28:26

Frazer 100%

PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER, IMMUNOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: Eventually – not in my lifetime, but sometime in my children's lifetime – I think we will be able to say that we've eradicated cervical cancer.

28:38

File footage. HPV Vaccine

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The intellectual property on Frazer’s breakthrough was licensed to pharmaceutical companies CSL and then Merck. It went on to become one of the world’s most expensive vaccines – earning Merck billions of dollars.

28:45

The vaccine has only recently become more accessible in developing countries – which is predicted to save millions of lives.

29:05

ROHIT MALPANI, MEDICINES ACCESS CAMPAIGNER: This vaccine has been incredibly profitable to the companies that have sold it. But also, then, incredibly difficult for people to access.

29:15

Malpani 100%. Super:
ROHIT MALPANI
Medicine access campaigner

Cervical cancer is, is one of the leading causes of death for, for women in, in developing countries. I think approximately 270,000 women die each year, and so the unaffordability and the lack of availability of this vaccine, whether due to high prices or insufficient manufacturing capacity, leads to this direct consequence of large numbers of women, sort of continuing to be vulnerable to developing HPV and eventually to cervical cancer.

29:23

Frazer 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER
Immunologist, University of Queensland

PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER, IMMUNOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: Look, I have to be honest and say that I realised that big pharma doesn't exist for any purpose other than to make money for its shareholders, and if we didn't have big pharma, we wouldn't have a papillomavirus vaccine.

29:52

File  footage. Frazer vaccinating girls. Vanuatu

It's very easy to criticise big pharma, but to be quite blunt until someone comes up with an alternative, we have to go with what we've got.

30:08

I think that what we've learned from that is that if we're developing a vaccine which is going to be a public health measure across the planet, we have to think at the start about how we're going to actually make that possible.

30:9

Scientists in lab

Music

30:34

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: When it comes to big production of billions of doses, that is not something that you do in a university lab. So, this is why we need this partnership between research and really experienced manufacturers.

30:37

Halton 100%. Super:
JANE HALTON
Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

I'm really pleased that the big multinationals have already indicated that they will partner with us to work together in a way that is unprecedented, and that they will actually produce vaccine at the cost of goods – what it actually costs to produce.

30:54

Vaccine team in lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Every vaccine team funded by CEPI has to commit to making their technology available in a fair and equitable manner – but CEPI won’t confirm if the vaccines they fund will be patented and who will own them.

31:09

Halton 100%

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: We have what we call our Equitable Access Policy, and all of the people who we work with have signed on to our equitable access policy.

31:31

Vaccine team in lab

They understand that is the basis on which we provided funding. But we're not usually the sole funder, so there is a negotiation to be gone through.

31:41

Halton 100%

What I can tell you is the crucial thing here is that vaccines are made widely available, that they're made available to people who need them first and most, and that they're made available at a price that is affordable.

31:50

Tierney 100%. Super:
JENNIFER TIERNEY
Director, Médecins Sans Frontières, Australia

JENNIFER TIERNEY, MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES, AUSTRALIA: The devil is in the details. What does the agreement actually say about equitable access, about pricing for drugs, about making sure that they're distributed on need,

32:03

Vaccine team in lab

not by distributing to the country that has the most power in the room or who has the most incentive to keep the pharmaceutical industry happy.

32:13

Tierney 100%

No amount of philanthropy or altruism is going to solve this problem. We need a systemic approach that actually means fair and equitable pricing at the end of the day on what should be a public good.

32:22

Glaxo Smith Kline

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: One of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies is GlaxoSmithKline or GSK.

32:35

GSK vaccine lab

Last year, they made a profit of nearly 13 billion dollars and they are currently working on their own COVID-19 vaccine.

32:46

Breuer 100%. Super:
DR THOMAS BREUER
Chief Medical Officer, GSK Vaccines

DR THOMAS BREUER, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, GSK VACCINES: GSK has publicly declared that of all the collaborations we have with partners around COVID vaccines that we don't intend to make profit during the pandemic phase.

33:01

Vaccine lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: GSK says once the initial pandemic is over, it sees a COVID-19 vaccine as a commercial product.

33:14

Grenfell 100%. Super:
DR ROB GRENFELL
Director of Health and Biosecurity, CSIRO

DR ROB GRENFELL, DIRECTOR OF HEALTH AND BIOSECURITY, CSIRO: Yes, companies will make money from this. That's why they're in existence and I suppose in one sense a coronavirus vaccine will be a blockbuster.

33:28

Young 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG
COVID-19 vaccine project, University of Queensland

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: The university is not going to take any royalties, or licence fee for the intellectual property that's bound up in the molecular clamp for this particular vaccine.

33:37

Vaccine team in lab

And so we're definitely committed to that equitable access. There is a potential for this to be a commercial product after this initial wave of a pandemic.

33:48

Young 100%

It's certainly our, our technology as a platform technology, so it can be applied to a large number of viruses.

33:58

Aerial. Médecins Sans Frontières clinic

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: Médecins Sans Frontières is on the frontline of the COVID response. It’s calling on companies and institutions not to patent any vaccines or treatments.

34:04

Tierney 100%. Super:
JENNIFER TIERNEY
Director, Médecins Sans Frontières, Australia

JENNIFER TIERNEY, MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES, AUSTRALIA: They need to come to the table and give us access to their science, to their production, to their formulations for the vaccines that they're producing, for the treatments that they're producing so that they can then be mass produced at the scale that we need and at the price point that we need.

34:22

White House drone shot

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The United States has been largely absent from international efforts to coordinate the development of a COVID-19 vaccine – pouring billions into its own program called Operation Warp Speed.

34:39

Trump. Super:
15 May 2020

DONALD TRUMP, US PRESIDENT: That means big and it means fast…

ROHIT MALPANI, MEDICINES ACCESS CAMPAIGNER: Operation Warp Speed is a new program by the United States government, which is seeking to sort of accelerate the development of a new vaccine as quickly as possible.

34:56

Malpani 100%. Super:
ROHIT MALPANI
Medicine access campaigner

So, you really get the sort of rupture between what the United States does, which has, you know, the most capital, the most resources, the most science, and really what the rest of the world is trying to do collectively, and that eventually is going to come to a real flashpoint.

35:07

Petrovsky 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR NIKOLAI PETROVSKY
Vaccine researcher, Flinders University

PROFESSOR NIKOLAI PETROVSKY, VACCINE RESEARCHER, FLINDERS UNIVERSITY: Any vaccine that's manufactured by the large pharma companies in the United States, I do not see how a single dose of vaccine will be exported or be allowed to be exported until that whole domestic market is satisfied, which may take two or three years.

35:22

Trump

There's nothing to, to stop a country banning the export of a product manufactured in that country. So that's their right.

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: What we don't want to see

35:39

Halton 100%. Super:
JANE HALTON
Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

is a level of vaccine nationalism, where countries basically are not prepared to contribute to the global effort. The best thing we can do at the moment is advocate for that, to advocate that actually if there's any of this disease anywhere in the world, it's in nobody's interest.

35:49

Hong Kong Police in shopping mall wearing masks

36:08

File footage. Swine flu

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: In 2009, during the swine flu pandemic, Australia’s CSL Limited was one of the first to invent a vaccine. A prior agreement with the federal government, required CSL to first supply Australia with enough vaccine to protect its population, before selling it to anybody else.

36:11

ROHIT MALPANI, MEDICINES ACCESS CAMPAIGNER: What it really points to is we have to have binding, fair agreements that all countries can rely upon.

36:41

Malpani 100%

If that doesn't occur, every government will behave in the exact way that Australia did at that time, because at the end of the day, governments will look out for the needs of their own citizens first, knowing that every other government might act in the exact same way if they happened to have a vaccine.

36:47

File footage. Swine flu, India

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: We worry about export control.

37:02

Halton 100%

We know that export controls have occurred in areas where there is high demand. And I think we would be naive if we didn't expect that there is a risk that that might happen in relation to vaccine. So, we need to take steps and we're taking those steps to ensure that production is globally diversified and that is our objective.

37:06

CSL

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: CSL has committed to manufacturing UQ’s vaccine if it’s successful. But Australia’s capacity to produce other types of potential COVID-19 vaccines is limited.

37:25

Purcell 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL
Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty Institute

PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL, Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty Institute: So fortunately for the University of Queensland vaccine, it's a fairly generic platform, so the kind of facilities that CSL produced would work for that, a protein subunit vaccine. If it turns out that it's a DNA or a particularly an RNA vaccine, we might be really struggling to manufacture that at the level needed.

37:44

GFX Super:
Medical Countermeasures Initiative:
National Capability Audit 2017 Summary

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: In 2017, a Defence Department report warned that Australia’s vaccine manufacturing

38:05

Onscreen text:
Key findings
"…overall capacity is low."
"…upscale production is a major weakness…"

capacity was low and the capability to upscale production was a major weakness.

38:12

Frazer 100%. Super:
PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER
Immunologist, University of Queensland

PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER, IMMUNOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: The recent report suggesting that we need more vaccine development infrastructure, I can only agree with. I think that we have to accept that for most of our vaccines at the moment, with the exception of the flu vaccine, come from overseas and that puts us in a very vulnerable position when borders are closed.

38:22

Halton 100%. Super:
JANE HALTON
Chair, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: We actually should be investing now in greater vaccine manufacturing capacity around the world. And I think that idea has significant merit. We know that at times, we need more vaccine to be produced than we might need on a regular basis.

38:40

Children's hospital exterior

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: While work on a new vaccine continues, scientists are testing to see if anything that’s already on the shelf could help.

38:57

Vaccine trial at children's hospital

One very old vaccine is now being trialled in the new fight against COVID-19.

PROFESSOR NIGEL CURTIS, Head of Infectious Diseases, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute: The BCG vaccine is nearly 100 years old

39:09

Curtis 100%

and it is a vaccine that was created to protect against tuberculosis or TB.

39:31

GFX super:
Professor Nigel Curtis
Head of Infectious Diseases
Murdoch Children's Research Institute

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The BCG vaccine doesn’t just prevent tuberculosis – Professor Nigel Curtis has spent much of the past decade studying the impact it has on our immune systems. 

39:37

Curtis 100%

PROFESSOR NIGEL CURTIS, Head of Infectious Diseases, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute: The really extraordinary and exciting thing about this vaccine is that it also enhances the immune system in a very generalised way.

39:51

In studies in Guinea-Bissau, a country with very high mortality in babies and in children, it was observed that those who'd had the BCG vaccine had a much better survival and the increased survival was not due to reduced deaths from tuberculosis, but reduction in deaths from the other infections that kill young children in high mortality settings, such as pneumonia and sepsis, and diarrhoea.

40:00

Curtis in lab

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The World Health Organization is now backing a trial to see if the BCG vaccine could help protect healthcare workers against COVID-19.

40:25

Curtis 100%

PROFESSOR NIGEL CURTIS, Head of Infectious Diseases, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute: A study of this size would generally take up to a year to plan and set up,

40:40

Vaccine trial at children's hospital

but we managed to get this trial going in 20 days from first meeting to design the trial to recruiting our first participant.

40:46

Curtis 100%

We're hoping that by using this property of the vaccine, we can enhance the immune system of healthcare workers so that when they're exposed to the coronavirus, they get a less severe disease.

40:52

Vaccine trial at children's hospital

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: The trial involves 10,000 health care workers in Australia, Spain and the Netherlands. It hasn’t received any federal government funding, but the Gates Foundation has donated 10 million dollars.

41:05

PROFESSOR NIGEL CURTIS, Head of Infectious Diseases, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute: Until we've had a chance to look at this properly, it's way too early to conclude that BCG vaccine provides any protection against coronavirus. 

41:42

Curtis 100%

And it's very important that we don't lose sight of these tried and tested methods. Despite the fact there's an urgency to getting results that we can use for this pandemic, unless we do trials and experiments properly, we're in danger of getting the wrong result.

41:52

University of Queensland

Music

42:10

Prof Young in lap

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: At the University of Queensland, Professor Paul Young and the team are preparing to take their vaccine to the next level. Human trials are due to start in July.

42:24

Frazer 100%

PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER, IMMUNOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: I think Professor Paul Young must be feeling quite anxious at the moment because of course a lot of people are expecting that the vaccine is going to work and we don't know yet.

42:46

Young 100%

PROFESSOR PAUL YOUNG, COVID-19 VACCINE PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: Let me just say, from our perspective, there's no race between those of us designing vaccines. The race is on for all of us against the virus and we'd be happy to see any other vaccine reach a point where it can make a difference in the global community. I suspect that one vaccine is not going to be enough to vaccinate the entire world, so we will need a multi-pronged attack on this. So, the more of us that get to that end point of being able to deliver at scale a workable vaccine, the better.

42:57

Scientist suiting up to enter CSIRO lab

Music

43:27

SOPHIE MCNEILL, REPORTER: But scientists warn that the chance of success is slim and that the world might have to learn to live with COVID-19.

43:32

Purcell 100%

PROFESSOR DAMIAN PURCELL, Head of Viral Infectious Diseases, Doherty Institute: I think, by nature, most people who are scientists in research labs around the place are conservative. So generally, we're not over overstating the results that are coming through. We're optimistic and we think that we've got enough irons in the fire to solve the problem, but we certainly don't want to give false hope.

43:45

Halton 100%

JANE HALTON, CHAIR, COALITION FOR EPIDEMIC PREPAREDNESS INNOVATIONS: I do think it's important to remind ourselves when it comes to the optimism that many of us feel that there's never been a vaccine produced for a coronavirus. We still don't have a vaccine for HIV. Even though we've now got treatments, which is fantastic, we don't have a vaccine for HIV. So, it is worth remembering that there are areas where people have invested billions of dollars to try and find an answer and to date that they have not.

44:08

Vaccines being stored in freezer

44:41

Outpoint after credits

44:56