Progress is being made on a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
Those were the words of Kansas Senator Jerry Moran Friday, who joined KMAN’s In Focus. Moran sits on the appropriations committee that funds the National Institute of Health (NIH). In a Zoom call with Kansas medical professionals July 9th, Moran says NIH Director Francis Collins testified that research is going well.
“There are five paths that look promising toward the development of a vaccine. Two of them look especially promising and those two are beginning clinical trials now. The expectation is that there will be a result by October or November,” he said.
Of the two especially promising paths, manufacturing will begin soon to build up stock. That way in the event a vaccine becomes available, Americans aren’t waiting around for it to be manufactured and delivered to their localities. Moran says a key challenge once a vaccine is ultimately developed is how it gets distributed.
“That’s what in my view we need to be working on and who goes first? I assume we’d agree is health care professionals, nursing homes, hospitals, we’d talk about first responders and those who come in close contact with certain people. But then what’s the next step? Somebody over a certain age or certain disease,” he said.
Moran says because of the anticipated demand once a vaccine is approved, the federal government must be proactive rather than reactive to ensure it can meet those demands.
NIH has convened with an unprecedented alliance called the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (or ACTIV), a cluster of seven governmental agencies, 20 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and four major non-profits to speed up the process of finding a vaccine.
As universities prepare for possible in-person classes this fall, Moran says coronavirus testing ability will be key to that happening.
On Thursday, University of Kansas Chancellor Doug Girod stated all students coming back for the fall would be tested. Other regent universities including Kansas State University are looking into that possibility. Moran says new testing is coming available soon that speeds up the process and in some cases can be done from home.
“There is a new test developing that involves just saliva. You spit into a tube at home, mail it to the laboratory and the indications are that in 24 hours you can have the results back,” he said.
Moran says improved testing like this will help improve the reopening process. He says he believes decisions about reopening schools need to be made at the local level. He also stated the mask debate should not be one that is politicized.
“I’m of the view that I want people to have the maximum amount of freedom, our constitution requires that, but it also only works when people behave in ways that are responsible to themselves and to others,” he said. “That’s not a political thing, that’s just human nature, that’s who we are as Kansans.”
Moran appeared Friday on KMAN’s In Focus. There he also spoke about the new suicide prevention hotline ‘988’ which was approved by the Federal Communications Commission last week. It will be implemented on July 16, 2022. During the transition, the current hotline 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) will remain in effect.
