By Bernie Comfort
It’s been a crazy couple of months. No one saw a global pandemic coming, much less how it would turn personal lives upside down, pump the breaks on our thriving economy or the tests of leadership it would bring to local, state and federal governments. I hope this finds you well and safe, and riding the storm. I also hope that you will join me in seeing the way through this unexpected disaster by continuing your leadership locally and supporting the freedoms and philosophies that have consistently made Pennsylvania and America great.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to upend our world, I have great faith in American ingenuity to help us get back to “normal.” The coronavirus may not have started in the U.S., but I feel confident that it will end here, in a land that values the free market and intellectual discovery that percolates from the people on up, not the government on down.
Indeed, the collective creativity of our private sector is already leading the way with vaccine research, potential treatments and improvements to diagnostic testing. Their work is essential to getting us back in business, back to school and back to living our lives.
Pfizer, for example, recently announced plans to expand human clinical trials for a vaccine by September. If results look promising, the company may be able to deliver millions of doses by October. This breakthrough could be a game-changer amid a global pandemic that has already claimed 302,000 lives worldwide,
Our best and brightest minds are moving at warp speed to stop the spread, including right here in Pennsylvania, home to brilliant researchers, caring physicians and a nucleus of pharmaceutical companies, such as Teva and GlaxoSmithKline.
Like our superheroes in scrubs, pharmaceutical company researchers are laboring long hours, investigating drugs that hold great promise in treating COVID-19 to help the country reopen for business, children return to school and families gather to mark milestones and celebrations. Experience, science and a patriotic can-do attitude, reminiscent of World War II’s Rosie the Riveter, will get the job done.
Let’s face it, government at any level cannot fight this invisible enemy alone. Just as private companies have stepped up and stepped in to make masks, hand sanitizers,
ventilators, and other personal protective equipment, now is the time for a public-private partnership with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry to develop cures and vaccines.
Public-private partnerships in the United States have a track record of success building transportation systems, developing infrastructure and bringing internet services into rural communities. To rescue lives and livelihoods, our best chance for returning to some semblance of life as we knew it is for government researchers to work with experienced clinicians and leverage billions of dollars in private-sector investments to deliver life-saving drugs to the people who need them.
Fortunately, this has already started to happen. The National Institutes of Health has launched a public-private partnership between federal researchers and 16 pharmaceutical companies, aimed at coordinating and expediting the development of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. The partnership is prioritizing research into drugs and vaccines that hold the highest near-term potential.
At the federal level, an alphabet soup of agencies is in high gear responding to COVID-19, from the CDC and FEMA to the military and the Small Business Administration.
At the same time, the biopharmaceutical industry is taking the initiative to ramp up diagnostic testing. Abbot Pharmaceutical, for example, took its existing rapid testing technology and fast-tracked its diagnostic application to the coronavirus. Even before the FDA approved the tests, Abbot took the risk of ramping up capacity to meet our overwhelming need.
Companies such as Gilead began to test remdesivir, the drug they had developed for the Ebola virus. Without waiting for the trial results, they ramped up production so that supplies would be ready if trials proved positive. In early May, as results showed promise, the FDA granted an emergency use authorization to make it available to patients.
Biopharmaceutical companies have rapidly developed antibody tests to determine whether someone had COVID-19 but was without symptoms. Such tests can identify potential donors for convalescent plasma treatments, so antibodies from recovered patients can help fight the disease. Coupled with diagnostic tests, these antibody tests will be crucial to determining when to reopen the economy safely.
Meanwhile, more than 700 clinical trials looking for drugs that can quash COVID-19 are progressing worldwide. These trials underscore that drug innovation by private American companies is the best hope we have for defeating the coronavirus.
Right now, our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness are counting on pharma and biotech to restore hope to our homeland.
On any given day, the United States fares better than so many other nations because of the ingenuity that thrives in a free market. We will defeat the coronavirus because vibrant innovation and classic American resilience are allowed to continue to walk hand-in-hand.