to end the Covid-19 pandemic.

And there are various estimates of the number of vaccine

projects currently under way.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

has put this figure at 183, and other estimates

put that at over 200.

Of all the vaccine projects that are currently in development,

can you give a sense of how many of these have actually

gone to human trial and you think are viable?

What are the chances of success?

Yeah, it's really important that there

are a lot of vaccine candidates in play.

Whether there's 183 or over 200, it's a big number.

And that's a very good thing because we don't know

which of them is going to work.

We don't have any other vaccine for a human virus

like this coronavirus.

We don't have vaccines for Sars 1 as or Mers or indeed yet Sars

2.

So it is important that there's a diverse portfolio

to take forward.

Of those 200 I would guess at the moment

there are about 20 lead candidates.

Of those 20 lead candidates I'm aware of probably about 10

that are in human trials already -

phase 1, phase 2 trials around the world, from China

to Europe to the US and elsewhere.

Chances of success.

It's a hugely important question.

And it, of course, depends what you mean by success.

But I think if you said each individual one at the moment

maybe has a 10 per cent to 15 per cent chance of success,

maybe 20 per cent with the more advanced ones, that's

a reasonable estimate.

Even with the number of vaccine projects in development,

is it the case that most of the money that governments

are investing are actually just going to a handful of these

because they want to back a winner

and ensure that their own population has

access to a vaccine first?

Yeah.

Globally, there's investment in all of these 200,

whether from national governments,

from the ACT accelerator, which has just

got started in the last month or so,

or indeed from Cepi and other agencies.

And it is absolutely crucial there's a broad portfolio

because we don't yet know which vaccine is going to work.

Yes, the lead candidates have had more funding.

But that's a good thing because it allows

them to progress at speed.

And speed is very important here.

But what is important is that we don't just

back one vaccine or two vaccines because they may fail.

What is important is that as a world

we back a whole portfolio of these vaccines,

including disruptive ways of making vaccines

- RNA or DNA technology or other technologies which

we haven't used before in vaccine developments.

The danger will be that countries back one or two

with all of their resources, and those one or two don't work.

And then those countries that do that will

be left without access to, hopefully,

a potential future vaccine.

And what about the production and distribution challenges?

So once we hopefully actually get a vaccine.

I mean, you have pharmaceutical companies now warning

about shortages of glass vials.

Can you give a sense of what our production and distribution

capability for a vaccine is now compared

to what it will need to be to do something that's

never been done, to vaccinate the entire global population?

Over time we will need to vaccinate very large percent...

parts of the population of the world's 7bn people.

But to begin with we would have to target those

at highest risk.

Healthcare workers, the elderly, people from other backgrounds

who have suffered disproportionately

in this infection.

You're absolutely right, though.

Having a vaccine is not enough.

Having a vaccine that can be offered to 1,000 people

is not enough.

If we're going to really have the exit strategy

through vaccines to this pandemic,

we're going to have to be able to vaccinate very large numbers

of people around the world.

And that means doing the science.

It means doing the research and development.

But critically, in parallel, rather than in sequence,

it means making sure we can turn that vaccine

into the billions of doses that we

need to provide for the world.

And that means thinking about things in a very different way

than traditional development.

It means thinking in parallel, not in sequence.

It means thinking now, if I had 200m doses of a vaccine could

I put it into a vial?

Have I got enough syringes?

Do I have a cold chain that could deliver this

all over the world?

And instead of doing that one after another

we're having to do that at risk, at scale,

and as a global manufacturing base in ways

that, frankly, we've never had to do before.

And that is the thinking.

It's the thinking behind what Cepi

is doing, what Gavi is doing, what the WHO is leading,

and what individual countries are all contributing to.

And in terms of that equitable access to any vaccine, I mean,

can you talk a little bit about the issue

of vaccine nationalism?

Is an internal agreement the only way

to ensure equitable access to any vaccine?

And to those priority groups that you mentioned -

health workers, for example - even in the poorest countries,

to ensure that they have access to it.

How realistic do you think that is?

It's got to be realistic.

I mean, it may sound idealism and it may sound naive,

but effectively that's what we have to do.

And there are two reasons for doing it.

One, because it's the right thing to do.

Healthcare workers have suffered disproportionately

through this, as indeed have the elderly, as indeed

in many countries in Europe and North

America have people from BAME backgrounds

have suffered more than others.

And we have to focus our vaccine strategies on those at highest

risk.

Vaccine nationalism.

In other words, I'll make a vaccine

for my country or my region, and I'll deal with my country

first, and I'll leave the rest of the world for later.

That is not enlightened self-interest.

Not only is it the wrong ethical or moral thing to do,

it's also not sensible.

It's not smart science.

The best way of addressing this pandemic

is to see it as a global issue.

It is not an issue for America or Britain

or China or South Africa.

It's an issue for all of us.

And until we deal with this as a global issue we're not

any of us are going to be safe.

So we have to make the case that just looking after yourselves

and leaving the rest of the world for later

isn't going to be on the solvers to get out of this pandemic.

Well, and on that point, as you say, this is a global issue.

And global leadership arguably has

been something that's been lacking,

at least from among political leaders in this crisis.

What is your response to how the US has handled this pandemic?

And if China and the US, if powerful countries like China

and the US aren't engaging or working constructively

on the global stage together within this response, how

damaging is that for efforts to not only find

a treatment and vaccines, but also

to ensure equitable access to those?

At a scientific level, I mean, we

have many partnerships and collaborations with scientists

both in the United States and in China.

And those are continuing.

I appreciate the tensions that there

are politically and the rhetoric that is there politically.

But at a scientific level, whether it

be in academics in China, academics in the United States,

or in industry in either country,

I have to say that we are very much engaged

with both of those.

And that's how we have to go forward.

I'm afraid on this one the rhetoric from the politics

is not something that I can get into.

It's not something I can influence.

What I can influence, and colleagues in Cepi, Gavi, WHO,

and elsewhere, the European Union, et cetera,

what we can influence is the partnerships at the scientific

and the research and development and the manufacturing levels

to make sure that we have vaccines available independent

of your ability to pay and independent of which country

you are in.

Yes, I would love countries to come together

to address a global crisis and come together

in political partnership as well.

And I hope out of this we have a new dawn which people will

appreciate that whether it's pandemics like Covid,

or indeed it's climate change or drug

resistance or the issues of mental health

that we all struggle with, that this

will demonstrate to the world there

is no future in narrow nationalism.

There is no future in a polarised world.

These are challenges which will face us all.

And unless we work out ways to work together -

yes, scientifically, but also as societies and politically

- we won't be able to address them.

Because nationalism is not the future and is not

the answer to those great challenges.

So at a scientific level actually

we're making great progress.

We talk to American scientists, Chinese scientists,

not every day but almost every week.

And we're finding great traction there

and huge support from both of them in order to move forward.

And let's talk about the funding behind all of this.

I mean, you supported initial calls for an $8bn response fund

to respond to this crisis which was met.

Can you give a sense of where that money has

been spent so far and how much more will be required?

Yeah.

That was the initial request.

And as you rightly say, and I pay tribute here

to the European Commission and to other governments that

have played a critical role in bringing that together

from the G20 to many countries around the world that

have contributed.

Yes, we were successful in raising that initial sum,

in fact, a little bit past that.

And that has allowed the work to go on since that pledging

conference on the 4th of May.

So the science, the research and development,

the progress that's been made in health sciences

and therapeutics.

We mustn't forget the therapeutics angle either.

That progress is continuing, and indeed there

is tremendous progress both on vaccines, therapeutics,

and diagnostics, and in support for health systems.

But that was only ever a starting point.

If you take that a new drug or a new vaccine...

let's say it costs you a billion dollars

to get to the first starting point of having a vaccine.

And we need more than one vaccine,

and we need therapeutics, and we need support diagnostics.

And critically, we need to support the public health

response, protection of healthcare workers,

personal protective equipment, and the rest of it.

We're going to need significantly more than that.

What we're working with, with WHO, with Gavi, with Cepi,

with the Therapeutics Accelerator, the Gates

Foundation, Wellcome, many governments around the world,

is to work out, now having had that initial injection to allow

that first work to get started, what more

is now going to be needed in order to enhance public health

support around the world, to enhance