The race for a Covid-19 vaccine has revealed Cold War-style divides in science

When Exeter University announced with some fanfare that it was to take part in an international study to consider the possible benefits of the old anti-tuberculosis (TB) vaccine against coronavirus, my first reaction – like that of many people, no doubt – was to congratulate the scientists and hope for their success. My second reaction, though, was to ask: what took them so long?

Back in April, when deaths from Covid-19 in the UK were at their height, there was much talk of the disparities between different countries – as there still is. But one factor briefly hazarded as perhaps part of the explanation was the difference in national governments’ policies towards vaccination against TB.

Researchers at the New York Institute of Technology had found that “countries without universal policies of BCG vaccination (Italy, the Netherlands, USA) have been more severely affected compared to countries with universal and long-standing BCG policies,” and that the difference could not be accounted for by other factors, such early adoption of social distancing.

Reduced mortality, the New York scientists said, suggests that BCG vaccination could be “a potential new tool in the fight against Covid-19”. The idea was not that it could protect against the virus, but that it could maybe mitigate its effects – and so provide a stop-gap until a targeted vaccine appeared. Large-scale trials began almost immediately in Australia, at the Murdoch Institute in Melbourne, with priority being given to health workers.

Then everything went quiet – until the announcement from Exeter this week.

Now it may be that the delay between April and now is explained simply by the process of fund-raising and the speed at which the wheels of academic institutions turn. But I wonder whether there might not be another factor.

At present, many countries vaccinate at birth, others at 7 years old or later. The UK, however, like many rich countries where TB is no longer considered to be a major risk, stopped universal vaccination in 2005, reserving it for those sections of the population deemed to be at particular risk. There is now in Europe a marked divide between those countries that stopped universal BCG vaccinations and those that continued – which include many in the former eastern bloc.

As the coronavirus pandemic swept across Europe this spring, there was widespread surprise in the UK and elsewhere that the eastern part of the continent – from Russia through to eastern Germany – seemed to be doing better in some ways, especially the death rate, than the western part. Subsumed in that surprise seemed to be a rather patronising attitude towards health standards and health provision in the former eastern bloc.

What business, it was implied, had these countries in outperforming the stellar health services of the “first world,” the UK included, when we all knew that their living standards were lower than ours and that in some cases, especially the furthest east, their communist-era health systems were largely unreformed? And my question is this: might that attitude, essentially a tendency to patronise the former eastern bloc, have contributed to a delay in looking more closely at the BCG vaccine?

What seems a gratuitously dismissive response to initial research about the BCG, however, is nothing compared with the suspicion and outright hostility being directed towards Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine research by many governments in the west, and their scientific and health establishments.

Back in July, the UK coordinated an announcement with the US and Canada, which accused Russian intelligence of trying to hack into their vaccine research. One institution that was targeted, it appeared, was the UK’s Covid-19 vaccine front-runner, Oxford University.

Whether by accident or design, this “advisory” notice completely drowned out an announcement from Russia that its company, R-Pharma, had just signed a contract with the UK-Swedish pharmaceutical giant, AstraZeneca to produce any Oxford vaccine under licence, and supply it. As subsequent, rather injured, statements from Russia pointed out, why would Russia be trying to steal something that it had shown its readiness to buy?  

Six weeks later, it was disclosed that AstraZeneca had received regulatory approval to start the third stage of its trial for a Covid-19 vaccine in Russia, in Moscow and St Petersburg. Even as the official UK line was damning Russians as cheats and thieves, it would seem that a major British company was cooperating with a Russian company in an entirely normal, commercial way.

Meanwhile, Russia has offered on several occasions to share its research, only to have its offers rebuffed and its research standards condemned. The only bright spot was early last month when The Lancet published a Russian paper on its “Sputnik” vaccine, only to find itself and the Russian research roundly condemned. This week, apparently undaunted, Russia announced that its development of a second vaccine was well advanced.  

Whatever the merits or otherwise of Russia’s vaccine research, it is hard to believe that scientists from any other country would have been treated with such opprobrium, before their research was even examined. It is also worth noting, on the hacking claims, that – as some UK cyber experts admitted quietly at the time – in today’s circumstances any intelligence service worth the name will be keeping a close watch on every other country’s vaccine research. Indeed, the new head of MI5, Ken McCallum, stated as much only this week, when he said that his service had “sought where we can to help on Covid ... crucially on the vaccine, we’ve been working to protect the integrity of UK research”. This is, truly, the new arms race.

The fact is that, while several countries, Russia included, talk of generously “sharing” any future vaccine worldwide, a ferocious contest is on to be first. Russia wants to show that it retains something of its Soviet-era scientific prowess and that its science can be a force for good. The UK – as is obvious from the government’s championing of the Oxford and other vaccine projects – is desperately hoping for a post-Brexit boost to its reputation for scientific excellence; and the United States wants to win just because the US always wants to win.

Of course, the contest is denounced by many scientists, but there can be no doubt that whoever wins will make sure that everyone knows they “won”, whether or not they decide to “share” or sell the life-saving product. National prestige is at stake in a – still – global world.

Vainly idealistic though this might be, however, I cannot help but feel this is a pity. Having a particular interest in art and ideas from the 1920s, I am struck by the remarkable fluidity there was in those days across Europe’s borders, all the way from Russia to France and Germany and across to Britain. People travelled and wrote, influenced each other, and exchanged ideas. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was the hope that the continent would now – in the American phrase – be a “Europe whole and free”.

What we have seen, with the west’s suspicion and even contempt for the east’s experience and ideas, is almost the opposite. We have a Europe that is still to an extent divided intellectually and in its science between east and west, with the result that different traditions and expertise are not pooled to mutual benefit. It is regrettable, but probably inevitable, that no western country took up Russia’s offer to share its vaccine research. Lack of trust made acceptance impossible, and in calling its vaccine “Sputnik”, Russia deliberately conjured up the space race. That era could, and should, have ended with the Cold War.