User:Biochemistry Pat 2/sandbox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_diplomacy/sandbox

Clinical Trials
Many Coronavirus vaccines have been developed in clinical trials to determine their efficacy. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is a non profit vaccine developed for the purpose of distribution toward lower and middle income countries. The phase one results of the clinical trial supported a two dose vaccination to be distributed 28 days apart. The trials involved participants either receiving the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine or a control substance like saline. The efficiency results gathered by comparing the hospital admissions that occured within 4 months of the trial for control and vaccine groups. The test’s accuracy is supported by the size of the sample group, diversity of ethnic communities and gender represented, and similarity of results between countries. The trials are constantly paused and investigated to validate the safety of the vaccines.

Operation Warp Speed
The rapid development of the Coronavirus vaccine was achieved with the contribution of organizations like Operation Warp Speed (OWS) which formed contracts to fund vaccine companies in development and distribution of vaccines. Six companies were selected by OWS based on if they matched the criteria of being a safe and effective vaccine that could be mass produced. Due to the necessity of a Coronavirus 19 vaccine the FDA approved unlicensed vaccines that adhere to the EUA standard to be utilized and OWA accelerated the development by allowing trials that would occur concurrently to be done simultaneously with mRNA and Replication-defective live-vector platforms for vaccine having the potential to be readily mass produced. Large scale manufacturing of the vaccine occurred at the same time as the clinical trial

Vaccine Nationalism
United Nation Resolution 74/274 allowed for the World Health Organization (WHO) to coordinate efforts for developing a Covid-19 vaccine and developed the resource sharing platform ACT-Accelerator. A total of 2.4 billion dollars were invested into research and development for the viruses which resulted in new vaccine platforms being explored by pharmaceutical companies and served as an initial investment for the clinical testing of potential vaccines which boost confidence for investors as they could invest in the effective vaccine. Vaccine Nationalism poses an obstacle to COVAX Facility aim to equitably distribute the vaccine across the world funded by Higher income countries over concerns such as increasing cost and delaying distribution of the vaccine. COVAX receives funding of $960 million from these countries in the form of donations and these countries form competing contracts with pharmaceutical companies.

COVAX Distribution concerns
Science diplomacy is necessary to establish infrastructure for distributing COVAX’s vaccine to poorer countries that lack the framework to utilize the doses. The failure of the 2009 H1N1 Virus Vaccine Deployment Initiative (VDI) to allocate vaccines to countries that had difficulties with developing a deployment plan resulted in the poorest countries receiving the least aid during the pandemic.

Communication and Open source networks
Communication technologies have a prominent role in communication during Coronavirus 19 as laboratories and in-person research conferences were closed due to physical distancing measures. The use of Zoom, Hangouts, and Skype provide researchers the advantage of eliminating barriers to Science diplomacy by removing travel costs and allow for more direct communication of data. COVID-net is an open source network that collects information about Covid 19 by comparing Chest X-ray(CXR) from hospitalization data to gather information on what factors are associated with the virus. NextStrain is an open source tool which tracks the epidemiology of several viruses including Covid 19, illustrates the strands of Covid 19 are present in world regions, and the frequency of individuals infected with specific strands based on data collected. Covid 19 CoV Genetics tool (Covid 19 CG) is an open source epidemiology source which gathered data from over 400,000 genomes which illustrate that several nonsynonymous mutations that have occurred in the virus as of February 2021 compared to virus sample gathered during the initial Wuhan outbreak(WIV04). Tracking the nonsynonymous mutations in Covid 19 is important for reopening countries as new strains of the virus could be resilient to the efficiency of existing treatment and vaccines. Labs are able to utilize Covid 19 CG to evaluate primers in the virus and the impact of mutations on primers being developed to combat the virus.

See also: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global