LEILA FADEL, HOST:
There are no approved vaccines for the kind of Ebola that's currently spreading in central Africa. This week, three candidates are getting fast-tracked. Global vaccine nonprofits are spending tens of millions of dollars for development and testing. But even with all that money, it'll likely be several months before any vaccines are given to people. Here to discuss is NPR's global health correspondent Jonathan Lambert. Hi, Jon.
JONATHAN LAMBERT, BYLINE: Hi, Leila.
FADEL: So tell us more about these new investments.
LAMBERT: So there are two. One is to fund all the testing and make sure that manufacturers make enough actual doses to do all that testing. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, is giving over $60 million to three vaccine-makers. Each is developing a vaccine to target the Bundibugyo species of Ebola. That's the one that's behind this current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. The other investment is from Gavi, another vaccine nonprofit. They announced they'll spend about $40 million to buy all these vaccines, assuming that eventually they're shown to work and get approved. This big kind of up-front investment is sort of similar to what was done during the COVID-19 pandemic when it wasn't clear which vaccines under development would end up working.
FADEL: So it sounds like they're hedging their bets to make sure that once a vaccine is shown to work, there's enough of it.
LAMBERT: Exactly.
FADEL: So what are the different candidates?
LAMBERT: So there are three, and each has potential benefits and drawbacks in terms of how soon they can potentially help slow down this outbreak. One promising candidate is from IAVI, a vaccine nonprofit. It's using the same approach as an Ebola vaccine that's already been approved called Ervebo, but it targets Bundibugyo. And its biggest strength is that it is similar to this one that's been approved and that has been shown to work before. And this one has gone through some animal testing. The drawback is that it's just hard to make. IAVI says it could take seven to nine months to just manufacture enough doses to do clinical trials in the field.
FADEL: I mean, it's spreading. That's a long time.
LAMBERT: Yeah. Definitely. And time is important. The faster that a vaccine gets developed, the sooner it can help save lives. And the other candidates might be faster. One is from the University of Oxford. It's using the same kind of approach as the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, and they say it could be ready for testing in, like, a month or two. But then they have to test it in animals and then in people, and that takes time. The third candidate is an mRNA vaccine from Moderna. As we learned during COVID, mRNA vaccines can be made really fast, but this candidate is in very early stages of testing, too.
FADEL: This is an ongoing outbreak. I mean, how difficult is it to do the testing in a situation like this?
LAMBERT: Yeah. It's definitely a challenge, but it's been done in previous Ebola outbreaks. Researchers will have to give out these Ebola vaccines and track how well they protect people from getting the disease. That could be especially tough in this outbreak, though. The epicenter is in an area of northeast DRC with a lot of ongoing conflict. Already, there have been attacks on health clinics there, and there's a mistrust of outsiders in this region. And that could make enrolling participants in the trials and following them more difficult. So that means it'll likely be many months before vaccines start to play a role in controlling the outbreak.
FADEL: OK. If that happens, what does an Ebola vaccination campaign look like?
LAMBERT: So first off, healthcare workers get vaccinated since they're especially at risk caring for Ebola patients. But beyond that, health officials use this strategy called ring vaccination. Once a suspected case pops up, they try to create this ring or wall of vaccines around that person to try to stop the virus from spreading. And in previous outbreaks, it's been super effective.
FADEL: Yeah. That's NPR's Jonathan Lambert. Thank you, Jon.
LAMBERT: Thank you.
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