Vaccines can win the race against COVID-19 variants. Here's how

A new wave of COVID-19 is engulfing many countries around the world primarily due to the increasingly prevalent and more transmissible Delta variant of the new coronavirus. With only a few regional exceptions, Delta is mounting a successful global attack.

In Indonesia and other Asian countries, health systems are overwhelmed and running out of oxygen. Across Africa – from Tunisia in the north to South Africa – the virus is surging; recently, recorded deaths on the continent jumped 40% in one week alone. In Europe, plans to lift or relax lockdowns are being delayed or modified. And in countries like the US and the UK, a number of key COVID-19 metrics have started to increase after months of decline.

The Delta variant (first discovered in India), and other variants of concern including Beta (South Africa) and Gamma (Brazil), are confirming the critical need to vaccinate billions of people around the world – fast. In the race between variants and vaccines, we are falling behind. Failure to pick up the pace now will enable this virus to multiply and mutate to the point where future variants could outsmart our vaccines.

In the quest to vaccinate every citizen of the world against COVID-19, speed and strategy are key. It’s essential to think smartly about the impressive armamentarium of vaccines at our disposal and ensure we don’t squander any of these lifesaving assets. No single vaccine can conquer COVID-19 – we need many.

Each vaccine should be deployed to the frontlines, targeted to where they can make the greatest impact so that no population is left behind. Above all, we need to follow through on vaccine delivery all the way from the supply depot to the last mile, turning every available vaccine dose into a vaccination in someone’s arm.

At Johnson & Johnson, it was precisely this kind of pandemic scenario that informed our selection of a single-dose vaccine that could be easily transported without the need for ultra-cold refrigeration. Of course, no vaccine developer could have predicted how the original Wuhan strain of coronavirus would evolve, and whether their vaccines would hold up against emerging variants.

Recent research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, along with a large real-world study of health workers in South Africa, suggests that the vaccine generates strong immune responses against Delta and other variants of concern. We now await results on protective efficacy from our large-scale clinical studies.

While getting vaccine science right is never easy, vaccine deployment on a global scale – in the middle of a pandemic – presents other challenges. Underscoring this, only slightly more than 1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. This has to change, not just for reasons of global equity, but because if we don’t get COVID-19 under control everywhere, we will not be able to end this pandemic anywhere.

Ultimately, what we do now in the race against the variants will help to define not just how quickly the global community conquers COVID-19, but whether we are adequately prepared for the next pandemic. The principles of multilateral partnership, global equity, and unfettered rapid response must be at the heart of any pandemic preparedness blueprint for the future.