10
◼ REMARKS Bloomberg Businessweek February 10, 2020deathsannuallyfromdiarrheaandisa majorfactorin
tropicaldiseases.
Chinais a one-partystatewhoseleader,XiJinping,is presi-
dentforlife.Yetthatpowermeanslittleif deployedtoolatein
a contestagainsta mutatingvirus.InDecembera mysterious
pneumoniastartedtosurfaceamongpatientsinWuhan,and
municipalandprovincialhealth-careregulatorswerenoti-
fiedbeforetheendofthemonth,accordingtopeoplefamil-
iarwiththeearlyphaseoftheepidemic.
Yeta completetravellockdownofWuhan,a flourishing
megacityof11 million,didn’ttakeplaceuntilJan.23.Bythat
time,caseshadalreadysurfacedinotherpartsofChinajust
aheadoftheLunarNewYearholidays,anepictravelperiod
andthelargestannualhumanmigrationintheworld.“The
coronavirushadbeenspreadinginthecityandsurrounding
areasformorethana monthbeforeeffectivemeasureswere
taken,”saysYangGonghuan,formerdeputydirectorofthe
ChineseCenterforDiseaseControlandPrevention.Asa result,
“thebaseofinfectiongrowthhasbeenenormous.”
It takespoliticalwilltogetoutinfrontofanepidemic.
Robustvaccinedevelopmentmatters,too,andthereinlies
anotherproblem.Whenit comestopandemicshots,aswith
treatmentsaimedatpreventingmalariaandtuberculosis,
“thereareessentiallynoincentivesforbigmultinationals,”says
ThomasBreuer,chiefmedicalofficerfortheGlaxoSmithKline
Plcvaccinesunit.Glaxoremainsfocusedonhigher-margin
products,suchascancerdrugs.Whilethecompanyis sharing
itsknow-howwithgroupsracingtodevelopa coronavirus vac-
cine, it licensed its promising TB vaccine to the Bill & Melinda
Gates Medical Research Institute. “The long-term financing
around this cannot rest entirely on the shoulders of compa-
nies like GSK,” Breuer says.
Since the outbreaks of SARS and the often fatal Ebola virus,
U.S. federal money for developing drugs and vaccines for
emerging diseases has increased, and drugs that may combat
coronaviruses are ready for trials. One is remdesivir, a treat-
ment from Gilead Sciences Inc. that failed tests in people with
Ebola. The first U.S. coronavirus patient, in Washington state,
received the drug after his condition worsened. He improved
the day after he was infused, according to results reported in
the New England Journal of Medicine.
Gilead says it’s shipped enough of the drug to China to
treat 500 patients and is working to produce more if the trialsstarting imminently in China are promising. “We have an army
of people working 24/7 now opening up manufacturing lines
and doing whatever we can to get as much available as quickly
as possible,” says Chief Medical Officer Merdad Parsey. Yet the
drug may already be the focus of an intellectual-property dis-
pute: China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology has applied for a pat-
ent on its use against the coronavirus.
Smaller companies might be more likely to enter the field,
but that would require government financial incentives, not
unlike the kind the U.S. Department of Defense offers to arms
makers for critical national security needs. “No one goes out
and buys missiles in the free market,” says Michael Osterholm,
director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and
Policy at the University of Minnesota. “There’s no capital-
ism, it’s all procurement. Creating a business model is one
of the challenges.”
More can also be done to identify pathogens before they
unleash their furies. “We are reactive rather than proac-
tive,” says Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins
University Center for Health Security. Diagnostic tests able
to identify the precise species that cause a patient’s illness
aren’t used that widely. If more testing were done on patients
with suspicious symptoms, we might have a better sense of
the pathogens lurking out there, he says.
Encouragingly, information sharing has improved since
SARS. Early in the current crisis, after Chinese scientists
had isolated the new coronavirus, its genetic sequence was
promptly submitted to several online data-sharing portals
where public-health specialists swap information.
That helped researchers get a better read on the virus’s
behavior and gather information to work on medicines,
according to Arnaud Fontanet, an epidemiologist and direc-
tor of Institut Pasteur’s center for global health research in
Paris. He’s confident there soon will be antibody tests that
will allow doctors to know whether someone had the virus
in the previous three months, even if they showed no symp-
toms. Disease chasers, Fontanet says, have also been able to
model the spread by following airline connection data. In the
Ebola crisis, mobile phone usage helped track transmissions.
British scientists are helping China track the spread of the
new coronavirus from its origin in Wuhan to countries around
the world. Viruses such as 2019-nCoV constantly incur small
mutations in their genetic material. While the alterations *FIGURES AS OF JANUARY 2018; 2017 DATAARENOTCOMPLETE.IFADISEASECAUSEDMORETHANONEEPIDEMICEVENTINONEYEARINACOUNTRY,IT’SCOUNTEDONLYONCE FOR THE YEAR IT OCCURRED THERE.†EVENT OCCURRENCES SHOWN FOR INFLUENZA A. DATA: WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, INFORMATIONISBEAUTIFUL.NETRecent Outbreaks
Selected global epidemic
events from 2011 to
2017*◀ Less contagious More contagious ▶50100 Chikungunya Ebola ZikaMarburgMeningitisMERSWest Nile
Yellow
Flu Typhoid fever Cholera
†