By Robert Madoi
President Museveni stated on August 20, 2020 in a speech at the National Resistance Movement national delegates conference speech:
“There are some promising prospects” in Uganda’s search for a coronavirus vaccine.
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No, Uganda’s prospects of making a Covid-19 vaccine are not promising
While addressing the third NRM national delegates conference on August 20, President Yoweri Museveni accurately recounted that by 1962 Uganda’s ‘enclave’ economy pivoted on 3Cs (coffee, copper and cotton) and 3Ts (tobacco, tea and tourism). With Uganda having shed off the enclave economy tag, Museveni took great pride in the fact that the country’s “GDP per capita is now US$ 908 (US$ 2580 using the PPP method).”
Attempts to embark on a similar victory lap for making inroads in the search for a coronavirus vaccine were however sometimes misleading, incomplete or wrong. Museveni said: “Many groups in the world, are working on [a covid vaccine], and even here our scientists are working on it. Our scientists are also working on anti-viral drugs, and from what they are telling me there are some promising prospects.”
Widely seen as a tough needle to thread, Ugandan scientists are reported to have put aside their diversity of competing interests to join the global race for a coronavirus vaccine. The researchers hail from Makerere University, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Kampala International University, Uganda Virus Research Institute, and Joint Clinical Research Centre.
Vaccines are not a particularly easy animal to grasp, but Museveni has consistently offered a measure of the distance travelled. Back in June, he said with some certainty that Ugandan researchers were doing their job and by all accounts doing it well. Museveni was, he said, “very hopeful on the front of the vaccine” with the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone being studied. He added thus: “The search for the candidate drugs with anti-viral activities is in high gear.”
In July, the coordinator of the team tasked with developing the vaccine, Dr. Monica Musenero, told Daily Monitor that plans were still in their infancy. A month later, quantifying the “promising prospects” that tickled Museveni’s imagination can be argued for with modest success. By August 25, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had its finger on the pulse of nearly 190 candidate vaccines. None was from Uganda, which, despite or in fact because of Museveni’s braggadocio, is shaping up to be a minion in the global vaccine arms race.
There are essentially four hurdles that candidate vaccines are expected to jump — all of which are for now proving lofty for Ugandan researchers. The first is the preclinical stage where the vaccine is trialled on animals to see if it triggers an immune response. If it does then phase one of clinical testing serves one of two purposes: ascertain the vaccine’s, one, safety and, two, efficacy on a small number of healthy adults. Phase two trials the vaccine on a wider age range. Bringing up the rear is phase three, which is essentially mass testing.
Out of 186 candidate vaccines, the vast bulk (139) are preclinical (not yet in human trials). The vaccines being trialled at a small-scale (phase one) are 25. The expanded safety trials (phase two) are 15, while seven are in large-scale efficacy trials (phase three). No vaccine has currently been approved for general use.
OUR VERDICT
Chances of Uganda ever producing a coronavirus vaccine are vanishingly small. Sceptics point to usual vulnerabilities, notably the capital-intensive process. Museveni’s audacious claims notwithstanding, the only noteworthy time Uganda and a coronavirus vaccine have been mentioned in the same sentence is when a collaboration with Imperial College London is proffered. Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) has a long-standing partnership with the London-based public research university. Pontiano Kaleebu, the venerable professor who heads UVRI, told The New Vision in July that Uganda will offer support to Imperial College London once it gets to the latter stages of clinical testing. The support will be in the shape of volunteers. Kaleebu, who measured his every word, was quick to dispute the characterisation of volunteers as guinea pigs.
Currently, Imperial College London has completed the preclinical stage of testing. Its candidate vaccine is yet to come through the first phase of clinical testing. It has been given to a small group of people based in the United Kingdom to determine whether it is safe and in addition learn more about the immune response it provokes. Imperial College London is however light years behind half a dozen entities (University of Oxford/AstraZeneca and BioNTech/Fosun Pharma/Pfizer to mention but two) whose candidate vaccines are attempting to jump the final hurdle. We therefore class Uganda’s pursuit of a coronavirus vaccine as nothing more than a pipe dream, and consequently rate Museveni’s statement False.
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Our sources
Yoweri Museveni, speech at NRM national delegates conference, August 20, 2020
World Health Organisation, Draft landscape Covid-19 candidate, August 25, 2020
The New Vision, Uganda seeks partnerships on coronavirus vaccine, August 18, 2020
Daily Monitor, Are Ugandan scientists close to getting Covid-19 vaccine?, July 4, 2020
Robert Madoi is a senior journalist, editor and academic based in Kampala.
