COVID-19 Is Shape-Shifting: Dr. William Haseltine Warns Variants & Lack of Containment May Weaken Vaccine Efficacy

Dr. William Haseltine

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Marianne O’Hare: Welcome to Conversations on Health Care with Mark Masselli and
Margaret Flinter, a show where we speak to the top thought leaders
in health innovation, health policy, care delivery, and the great minds
who are shaping the hea lth ca re of the future.

This week , Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. William Haseltine ,
s cientist, author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He's founder and
chair of ACCESS Health International, also founder of multiple health
tech startups including Human Genom e Sciences, and the author of a
number of living e - books on COVID - 19, including Variants! The Shap e -
Shifting Challenge of COVID - 1 9 . He's calling for increased and more
widespread testing for America to get back to business, and warns
variants could cause p roblems for vaccine effectiveness.

Lori Robertson also checks in . Managing Editor of Fact C heck .org , looks
at misstatements spoken about health policy in the public domain ,
separating the fake from the facts. And we end with a bright idea
that's improving h ealth and wellbeing in everyday lives.

If you have comments, please email us at [email protected] , or find
us on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever you listen to podcast s. Now ,
stay tuned for our interview with Dr. Wil liam Haseltine here on
Conversations on Health Care .

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Mark Masselli: We’re s peaking today with Dr. William Haseltine, s cientist, author,
entrepreneur and philanthropist. He was a professor and researcher
at Harvard School of Medicine at the Harvard T . H . Chan School of
Publi c Health, where he founded the c ancer and the HIV / AIDS
research depa rtments. He is the founder and c hair of ACCESS Health
International , dedicated to improve health care around the world.

Margaret Flinter : Dr. H aseltine has founded more than a dozen biotech companies,
including Human Genome Sciences, written over 200 peer - reviewed
papers , and a number of books, most recently on the pandemic,
among them a Family Guide to COVID , COVID Commentaries : A
Chronicle of a P lague , and his lat est release Variants! The Shap e -
Shifting Challenge of COVID - 1 9. He's been writing a series of articles
on the pandemic for Forbes magazine, and Dr. H aseltine , we welcome
yo u back to Conversations on Health C are today.

Dr. H aseltine : Thank you very much for the opportunity .

Mark Masselli : Well, it's great to see you , and you know, we're about a year out since
SARS CoV - 2 virus came to the United States . It's infected globally tens
of millions of people , killing over a million . W e're around 450,000
deaths in t he United States. And you know, you have really dedicated

Dr. William Haseltine

your life , work to , sort of unraveling the mysteries of many dis eases ,
b ut in your latest book V ariants, you call this pathogen a shape
shifter . And I'm wondering, you know, we're just at this inter esting
intersection where we're telling everyone we've got a vaccine , a near
cure , a couple of vaccines out there. But the novel Coronavirus , I think
you shared with us before , was bound to mutate . I think what's on
everyone's mind, i s this mutation, this new variant, more dangerous,
more lethal, or is it something that th e current vaccines can manage .

Dr. H aseltine : You know, t here's no definitive answer. It's a matter for the future to
determine. But there are indications if y ou look closely. Y ou know, at
the beginning of this, everybody was worried but they thought, well,
it's not going to change too much. C oronaviruses are pretty stable.
They come back every year the same way they have [inaudible
00:03:25], we haven't ever seen much change. I had a diffe rent view. I
looked at them more like the flu virus , where the cold - causing
Coronavirus es come back every year. And the same ones can come
back and get you the very next year. Gee, they have some tricks up
their sleeve . But most of their tricks were modula ting your immune
response , s o we didn't make a good immune response to that so
same guy could come back .

I now realize although that's true, they have another trick up their
sleeve, which is to change , and they are real shape - shifters . Eli Lilly
[ph] treat ed patients with a monoclonal antibody . They
understandably saw variants that were resistant in the patients they
treated. The chilling thing that I saw about that paper is they found
antibody resistant variants in the people they hadn't treated , the ones
with the placebo. They were there , a nd that say s there's a lot of
variations. The second one is something most people didn't pay much
attention to , a nd that is , in March, Europe started being infected
wid e ly , a nd it turned out there was a new variant there . It's called
D614G , and people were saying oh, maybe it's a founder effect. It
took over every other virus in the world. So if the Wu h an strain is the
root of a tree, D614 is the trunk. Everybody's got D614 . And it has a
very slight advantage. It does a c ouple of little things to improve how
easily it can be transmitted. That was a warning right then that this is
not a stable virus.

Now that we know we're starting to look , and the more we look the
more we find. We're starting to find new variants that don' t look very
much like any other variants. The California variant that just popped
up is not like the South Africa n , the UK, or the Brazilian variant. So
there's a lot of variation. People say it's going to be a race between
v accine, public health measures t o tamp this down, you ask me, are
these go ing to escape vaccines? The answer is UK virus does so
we e kly. The South African and Brazilian viruses do it pretty well w ith a
caveat . You're looking at the best possible time to see k protection

Dr. William Haseltine

because it' s imme diately after vaccination. I am going to predict that
as the antibody concentrations wane, those differences between the
ability of the vaccine to protect the variant is going to become greater
and greater and greater, to the point where you'll have no pro tection
at all. And I think that , because these variants are re - infecting the
same people that were already infected, that actually is occurring i n
Brazil, and in South Africa. I t's caus ing a huge pandemic right now i n
Manaus, Brazil, where 76% of people h ave already been infected .
There's a brand new wave of infections. Remember, these vaccines
are directed to one piece of the virus , n ot the whole , at least most of
them. The re are few that are killed vaccines, but most of them that
you've heard about are j ust the envelope glycoprotein. So we're
coming at protection with not a whole deck of cards.

Margaret Flinter : Yeah.

Dr. H aseltine : Sure, they're aces , b ut isn't the whole deck .

Margaret Flinter: Yeah.

Dr. H aseltine : And it may be that the seven of spades is as important as the king of
diamonds in this game .

Margaret Flinter: Well, it's perhaps a long answer, and a very serious answer, and one
that we are really paying attention to. And I look back to when we last
spoke with you , it almost seems like anothe r era because no vaccines
were available at that time , a nd now we've distributed just over 30
million vaccines here in America, the Moderna and the Pfizer. We
have new candidates coming out. Johnson & Johnson may have just
one dose. And we think about that and all the effort that we are
pouring into getting those vaccines out there , a nd I guess I have to
ask, it would seem the push should still be get maximum vaccines out
there, try and get this elusive herd immunity t o the degree that we
can anyway. S o wha t's the message of somewhere between hope and
inspiration around trying to get as great a percent of the population
vaccinated as possible ?

Dr. H aseltine : I think the answer is yes, get vaccinated, vaccinate as vigorously as
possible , o ne of the reasons be ing that the variants are there . The
more people are infected, the more variants are going to be popped
out . I actually liken this to Proteus the ancient myth , where you
grabbed it , in the very act of grabbing it chang ed its shape. That's
what we're actual ly doing. Our interventions are giving it resistance ,
so it's changing. We've got to push it down before they get too big.
The further we push this down by vaccination, and I should say public
health measure, you know, our public health measures are woeful ly
inadequate. There are five countries in the world that have eliminated
SARS CoV2 , three of those had major infections, Australia, China and
Singapore . They virtually have no infections except those that come in

Dr. William Haseltine

from the outside today. And they didn't ha ve a vaccine .

I hope with a vaccine, widely distributed and taken as much as
possible , p lus, much more serious mask - wearing , social distancing,
lockdowns, quarantines as appropriate , mandatory controlled
isolation. Those are the steps others have taken, th at we know work .
Now I know what America is like , I live here. But if we don't eliminate
the virus from our shores, we're going to be contending with this for
many years to come. And once we do, we have to help everybody
else. Because if you look at those countries I just cited today, I said
they eliminated it, they did. But they're not COVID free, because
occasionally, a virus sneaks in from outside on a frozen package , on
somebody with a long lingering disease , a nd they have to institute
locally that whol e process all over again. So control it through public
health and vaccination to eliminate this and then go on and help the
world eliminate it. It can be done. I have to say I'm not very optimistic
that we have the will to do it properly, I think in a posi tion that the
net result is going to be an endemic disease, like the flu that comes
back to haunt us every winter.

Mark Masselli: Yeah. Well, you're so right about it. It's going to take real leadership ,
and you we re really making the point that it is a gl obal solution that
we need to have. We simply can't solve it on our shores, we really
have to have a concerted effort. And I'm wondering, you know, since
President Biden took over, one of his first official acts was to restore
US membership in the World He alth Organization , and the WHO
formed an o rganization called COVAX , which is really this global
partnership to ensure that poor countries have equal access to the
vaccine. Talk about these global efforts . We're all part of this larger
pandemic that we have to eliminate all across the globe. What are the
efforts to date , a nd what additional steps does the World Health
Organization need to take?

Dr. H aseltine : Well, you know, we have been very successful with smallpox. I mean,
that's one of the great miracles of modern science and global
organization . Smallpox is eliminated, doesn't exist anymore. Polio
doesn't exist, except in very small pockets. And we have the potenti al
of wiping out polio . W hy ? Because we took a global approach . Every
country checked in , m ost countries agreed, even in war torn areas of
the Congo we were partially successful, and maybe will eventually be
fully successful. The one thing I have noticed about this pandemic is
it's brought the global scientific and medical community together,
mo re than it's ever been , companies and scientists. So globally, we
are on the case. P harmaceutical companies have opened the kimono
in a way I've never seen before, showing us what they're doing with
drug development, which is another major step that we hav e to take.

All of these things are extremely positive. What isn't positive is how

Dr. William Haseltine

cumbersome t he international machinery is , the competitive nature
of companies that I want my vaccine, and I'm not going to give it to
you because my people need it. But you know, if you're a political
leader, you can understand that the people in your country demand
it , and if the supply is short, it's going to take an exceptional leader to
say I'm going to give a good chunk to somebody else. You know, you
mentioned how many vaccines , Novavax is coming along , the Chinese
vaccines are working , there are two or three of them coming along.
India is about to enter a big time . Russia is already there with the
Sputnik V . We're going to have many different vaccines , a nd I think
we're going , by the year’s e nd we're going to have production where
we can begin to talk about vaccinating 2 - 3 billion people in the world .
T hat isn't something new b y the way . We already do that . I've visited
tiny little Indian villages, wh ere it’s taken me th ree or four hours to
get to and there's a freezer full of vaccines, and somebody who knows
what to do with that vaccine, and they're cheap . They're less than $1
a shot.

Margaret Flinter: Right.

Dr. H aseltine : And I'm very happy to see that we rejoined the WHO. I really like the
organizations like CEPI as well as COVAX that are working on this.
These are really great organizations that need whatever support we
and other countries can give them.

Margaret Flinter: Dr. H aseltine , sort of going from the global t o maybe a focus on sort
of individuals. We've been very focused on vaccines and also on the
acute treatment of people in the hospitals, which you know, since the
holidays have just been suffering so much with the influx of people.
But in primary care and i n practice in the community, we're just
seeing this emergence of what people are calling the long - haulers , the
people for whom they've transitioned to someth ing like an
autoimmune disorder. I know you've been doing a lot of analysis on
the pathology of COV ID - 19 and how it can trigger immune responses
in the body . We'd really be interested in hearing some insights from
you about what these c onditions are that are emerging , w hat is health
care, primary car e , o ngoing health care really going to be need to be
p repared to address in terms of the people who've had COVID and
survived, some of whom seem to have had fairly mild cases b ut now
are just not recovering. Maybe you could share your insights about
that with us a bit.

Dr. H aseltine : Well, you know, in any wa r, y ou count the dead , or you count the
wounded. We haven't been counting the wounded , and they are
probably about 10 times as many. So if there are 400,000 dead, about
4 million wounded. That's a lot of people. Let me sort of break it down
into different segments. There are some people who are
immunosuppressed and they get the virus , the virus lingers, not for

Dr. William Haseltine

weeks, but for months. And when you start toting up how many
immunosuppressed people there are, it's a lot of people, cancer
survivors, people on dr ugs for psoriasis, people on drugs for multiple
sclerosis, people on drugs for inflammatory b owel disease, and I could
go on.

Margaret Flinter: Sure.

Dr. H aseltine : N ot to mention older people. We are kind of immunosuppressed
when it comes to antibody prod uction to new infectious agents. So
there's one population that's continually infected and producing
viruses. T hen , there are many things that this virus does. One of the
nastiest things it does is it inflames our vascular system, not just the
venous syste m, the entire vascular system. But once you have
inflamed the arterial and venous system, you've got a problem on
your ha nds , b ecause that leads to all sorts of secondary damage. First
of all, it leads to clots , a nd so one of the symptoms you see is very
s imilar to what you see with a heart - lung m achine patient. A lot of
micro clots all over the brain, you’ve brain fog . Anybody who's been
on a heart - lung m achine is not supposed to make a serious decision
for a year. And they have a lot worse clots in the ir lungs , in their
kidneys.

Whereas now , if you look at the neurologist s that have been following
that , there is damage to some parts of the brain preferentially, as a
result, not direct infection they think, but damage to the blood system
that's feedin g that part of the brain . Right ? T hen there's some direct
damage to the lungs, not just the clots, but the actual damage . The
virus can infect some cells in the heart and create myocarditis . I t can
infect parts of the pancreas and cause diabetes . Some of the eve nts
that happen destroy the kidney, you need kidney transplant s .
Sometimes you've lost a leg. So this is almost a n equal opportunity
destructor. I t can cause multi - organ damage , more than one in one
patient.

So it's not surprising that we're seeing people with a very long
sequelae . And I think we're going to have to partition the different
kinds of things we're seeing a little m ore carefully for primary care.
B ecause some people have primary diabetic consequences, some will
have breathing consequences, some may have cognitive problems . It's
not going to be a unitary presentation. And so I think that is
something that the re 're going to have to be textbooks , AI programs,
other things developed to help primary care physicians deal with the
consequences of this . And as you said, i t’ s pretty serious because it's
not that 1 % or 2 % or 3% that are seriously ill and hospitalized ,
a lt hough they have this problem in spades . It's a much larger
population. Some people that have relatively minor symptoms can
have long ling ering effects. Fatigue is one of the biggest ones. It's a

Dr. William Haseltine

very serious effect. Fatigue is debilitating as any other kind of disease.

Mark Masselli: We're speaking today with Dr. William H a seltine , scientist, author,
entrepreneur and philanthropist. He's Ch air o f A CCESS Health
International . He’s also c hair of the US - China Healthcare Summit . He's
written a series of books on COVID - 19, which are updated to reflect
the latest scientific discoveries around SARS C oV2 . You know, I
wanted to pull the thread on you r earlier comments that really the
development of the COVID - 19 vaccine was really a scientific
achievement of a lifetime , a nd then sort of pair that with your earlier
statement that you were worried about the longer term effectiveness
of each individual va ccine. And now M oderna is working on a booster ,
so I wanted to get your thoughts on that. But also, are you following
the clinical trials? We haven't heard a lot about them. They showed us
really the efficacy , a nd now we're going to look at the effectivene ss in
the larger population. But I'm still interested in who's monitoring
those to give us some data, who in the scientific community is looking
at that , a nd then it sounds like some of the pharmaceutical companies
are already believing what you're believi ng that this is going to be
perhaps an annual b ooster or a new shot being given.

Dr. H aseltine : Let me -- the first thing I would say, I , like you , would like to know
what's happened to those early vaccines. What is their antibody level?
What is their neut ralizing antibody? How many of them have gotten
infected? Those are really important question s. If they are infected,
what was the infecting strain? We don't know that. And it's high time
we got to know it. So I agree with you. You've asked a very importan t
question. Where is the data? Now , going back to the length of efficacy
of various vaccines , w e're so proud of ourselves in developing a
vaccine with a brand new technology in record time. Let me remind
people that the record was four months set in 1956 b y Maurice
Hilleman with an I nfluenza vaccine. If you want to have a Guinness
Book of World Records, you got to have the real record.

Secondly, the winners for developing a vaccine were not the United
States, they were the Chinese. They developed killed vac cines months
before we had ours . They had a problem ; t here was no COVID to test
in China s o they had to rely on other tests. So they were slower in
clinical development. Now, what the relative efficacy of all the
different vaccines is will only be known wh en the same vaccines are
us ed in the same populations, because there's mixtures of viruses,
demographic , age groups, all sorts of things that depend. I would say
one thing for sure , these vaccines are working and it's great news.

Now, n ext question. How lo ng are they going to last? Well, the only
real experience that I know of with Moderna’s type vaccines is with
Ebola, Zika and RSV, and the answer is pretty clear. N ot long, half life ,
three months, and in fact, it was so short that the company who was

Dr. William Haseltine

co - d eveloping the RSV vaccine , gave it up. Is that going to be the case
here for the mRNA vaccines? Well, there's one data point we have
seen which is the relative neutralizing activity in young, older and
oldest people . And in the older and oldest, it ha d a h alf life of about
three month s, longer in younger people, which is encouraged. What it
will be w e don't know until we actually see the data , b ut again, back
to your other question, w here is the data?

Now, all the studies we've seen , this fantastic efficacy ’ s at a maximum
point of immune response just after the vaccination was ended. Very
short. Nobody’s looking a year up because the year hasn't passed.
Now, antibody levels fall . They all fall , or almost always , a nd then the
question is will the memory kick in? That's everybody's hope. But
there is no guarantee. It surely hasn't worked for flu. And so what we
see with natural infection is in many people fading immunity and the
possibility of re - infection. So , there are a lot of issues that as you say,
we need to see some more follow up data.

Who's following that? You know, one of the things I was unhappy
with , w ith the FDA when they were giving emergency use
authorization , is they didn't really address those questions properly.
Remember, they ha d emergency use authorization . The FDA now has
a real chance to say you're not going to get authorization until you
show us exactly what you're going to do for long term follow up.
We're not going to let you get real , a nd we may even pull your EUA i f
you don't do what we ask. We need this data, get it and give it to us
and do it in a really detailed way. As I say , not just what the antibody
levels are but what it does with the various strains w hen you're out ,
what the strains are that are actually re - infecting those peopl e who
were vaccinated , I'd like to have that data. There were people re -
infect ed who were vaccinated . Was their immune response weak , or
was it a variant virus? How else was it slipping through? So those are
questions I think that your very interesting que stion caused me to ask.

Margaret Flinter : Well, that sounds like a very good clarion call to the FDA, and we’ ll
probably be hearing more about that. But you know, as you were
speaking, I was focusing for a moment on your backdrop there, and
the titles Fami ly Guide to COVID, COVID Back to School Guide , a nd
remembering that it was August, which seems like an awfully long
ti me ago, when we talked to you l ast . It was just before the school
year was started, and we're asking what the guidance to families is .
And it's been a rough year for kids and families , a nd we certainly are
lo oking at the mental health data, then we are seeing the academic
performance data, the social issues. I mean at the time, I remember
you said, you know, look at the data, if there's a lo w incidence of
infection or outbreaks in the community , the kids can probably attend
school safely. But we've seen such variation around the country. What
would you say to people now about kids being back in school ,

Dr. William Haseltine

teachers being back in school and what t hey can think of in terms of
safety ?

Dr. H aseltine : Well, I think there is a couple of things that intersect. First and
foremost, what's the level o f infection in your community? I f you're at
the red level, a lot of people are being infected still. And you have to
remember, things are declining, but with three times the rate we ever
were before, right now, three times rate of infection . We were at the
worst before. So we've got a long way to go. That's the first thing to
say. But know where your area i s . If you're red, don't think about
sending your kids to school, except under the most exceptional
circumstances, some of which do exist. Okay ? The second question is,
are teachers going to be vaccinated? Let's hope teachers get
vaccinated . Adults are sensitive .

Now, there are a lot of studies that say that kids are about one third
a s infectable as adults. But there are other studies that say kids have
more contacts than adults, maybe three times as many contact s. That
doesn't exactly equate, but i t is a factor. Other one say, w ell, you can't
really see much infection in schools, the infection s that you see in
school come from outside the school. T here is a variant sort of
curveball, and that is two of the variants, the UK and the South
African. The data is showi ng more kids are infected. Proportion of kids
that are infected is higher , and the proportion of kids that are getting
sick is higher. And I'm talking about sub adolescent kids, not
adolescent, sub - adolescent kids and adolescents, as well.

And then there are questions that everybody should properly raise
w hat's the demographics? You were taking a look at the summer, now
you're looking in the fall? This is two different groups of people.
They're not really the same . You know, these kids are going to school,
adults we re staying home before they were out there. So maybe
these numbers really don't mean anything. I'm afraid they might,
because what's driving the increased transmissibility of these variants
is the ir increased infectability . T hey have an intrinsic ability to more
efficiently latch on to the receptor. Why do we think kids are spared ?
Because they have less receptors. Now you've got a virus that can
make better use of the little receptors that are there. So, I think
you've got to be very cautious whe n you're reopening the school.

Now t he other thing we have to do that we should talk about a little is
major sequence surveillance . We have to know what variants are in
our community . The US [inaudible 00:25:31] screens and sequences
5% , we sequence 0 .3% . W hy ? I can't tel l you , it was a horrible
oversight . Okay ? Why w ere South Africa, and the UK ahead of
sequencing . You know, handheld sequencers exist today that you can
use on the spot. And out of this nanopore sequencing, you get the
answer in hours, very cheaply. So, we should , and I was happy to hear

Dr. William Haseltine

the head of the CDC say we have to do a heck of a lot more
sequencing.

Mark Masselli: Well let me sneak in one last question, because it really relates to, you
know, the change of governance that we've had in Washington .
President Biden's COVID task force is filled with a lot of very seasoned
talents. We have a new CDC director , has a heavy lift in front of her
really trying to restore credibility. But it seems like they've taken
some things out of your playbo ok in terms of nationwide public hea lth
measures. I think you talk about it as blocking and tackling dramatic
improvement in the supply chain. How are you looking at the new
administration? What hopeful signs are you seeing? And where do
you think they mig ht need a little nudge?

Dr. H aseltine : They have -- I think I can't be more pleased with what they're doing.
They have great people who are lifelong dedicated public health
serv a nts . They're listening to them. They're allowing them to speak to
us . We hear what they have to say. I like what they're saying. T hey
have some very good ideas. T hey know what to do . We have a
problem in America . You can only lead people who want to follow ,
r ight? If the kids didn't wa nt to follow that Pie d Piper, they wouldn't
have left the town . Well, we have a big bunch of people that don't
want to follow , and so there are limits I think, and they feel those
limits. Now they have to make a judgment , and you know, I'm not in
their shoes , b ut I would rather see much more emphasis on tougher
public health measures.

For example, for travel, I would like to do exactly wh at the countries
that are COVID - free do. Make sure you’ve taken PCR test and an Ig M
test b efore you get on the plane. When you arrive, isolate yourself for
two or three weeks. In some countries, you're now isolating for three
weeks, because you know that infection can take long , and not just
isolate at home , c ontrolled isolate by yourself in a hotel room that’s
supervised. So you don't h ave that opportunity to leave . Righ t ? T hat's
what I'd like to see. Now, i n addition to that, I'd love to see, flood the
country with free self - administered COVID tests s o businesses,
schools and families can use them. And I'd love to see an incentivized ,
or if necessary, mandatory isolation for those who are infectious.

Those are the steps we're not hearing about. And if we don't hear
about it, we're not going to drive it to zero. We are going to d rive it to
a low level, we're going to think everything's fine , a nd we've done it
twice before a nd we know what happens next . Kaboom! That's what
I'm afraid of. So I would like -- everything they're doing is right. I'd like
them to take it one step further. But I understand the re are political
realities, and how hard you can push back, or how boldly you can lead
people who want to go where no man has gone before.

Margaret Flinter: We’ve been s peaking today with Dr. William H aseltine, scientist,

Dr. William Haseltine

entrepr eneur, author, philanthropist, c hair of ACCESS Health
International and the author of numerous books , including his latest
release Variants! The Shap e - Shifting Challenge of COVID - 19 . You can
learn more about his work by going to his website
www.williamhaseltine.com , o r follow him on Twitter at
@ WmHaseltine . Dr. Haseltine, w e thank you so much for your
dedication to solving the mysteries of some of humankind's greatest
health challenges, and for finding a way to share your vast knowledge
both with the scientific and the clinical community, but also with just
folks trying to do the best they can to figure out how to get through
this pandemic, s tay safe and keep their famil ies safe. Thank you so
much for joining us on Conversations on Health C are again.

Dr. H aseltine : Thank you. It's my pleasure .

[Music]

Mark M asselli: At Conversations on Health Care, we want our audience to be truly in
the know when it comes to the facts about health care reform and
policy. Lori Robertson is an award - winning journalist and Managing
Editor of FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan, nonpro fit consumer advocate
for voters that aim to reduce the level of deception in U.S. politics.
Lori, what have you got for us this week?

Lori Robertson: What do the new Coronavirus variants mean for the pandemic? There
is no firm evidence yet that a ny of the variants of SARS CoV - 2 cause
more se vere disease , or are more lethal. British authorities revealed
on January 22 that four analyses indicated there was a ‘ realistic
possibility that the variant that emerged in the United Kingdom could
be more lethal ’, but they cautioned t his was based on limited data.
However, experts say variants that are more easily spread , can still
lead to a large number of deaths. Data indicate that variants first
detected in the UK and South Africa may be more contagious.
Because of the exponential nature of viral spread , an increase in
contagiousness can have a bigger effect on the number of deaths in a
population than the same increase in a virus’ lethality.

In late December, Colorado officials confirmed the first reported case
of C OVID - 19 in the US due to the variant that emerged in the UK. And
in late January, the variant that was first detected in South Africa was
reported in t w o individuals in South Carolina. Scientists expect
vaccines for COVID - 19 will work against these variant s, but they're
monitoring the situation. The good news is that should any variant
prove to be evading a vaccin ated person's immune response, t he two
COVID - 19 vaccines with emergency authorization in the US can be
quickly modified. Both use messenger RNA to train the immune
system to recognize SARS CoV - 2 . That can be revised by swapping in a
molecule with a slightly different sequence. And that's my fa c t check
for this week . I'm Lori Robertson, Managing Editor of Fact C heck .org.

Dr. William Haseltine

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Margaret Flinter: Fact Check.org is committed to factual accuracy from the country’s
major political players and is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy
Center at the University of Pennsylvania. If you have a fact that you’d
like check ed , email us at www.chcradio.com . We’ll have
FactCheck.org’s Lori Robertson check it out for you here on
Conversations on Health Care.

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Margaret Flinter: Each week Conversation s highlights a bright idea about how to make
wellness a part of our comm unities and everyday lives.

People living in Sub - Saharan Africa have tougher odds at overcoming
diseases , a nd the problem is not just the lack of access to health care
providers , b ut once someone is diagnosed with an illness, access to
vital life - saving me dicine is out of reach for many who are sick simply
because they can't afford them.

Gregory Rockson : Africa has some of the highest drug prices in the world, simply
because it's a free price in the market. So you can take a single
medicine, and two pharmac ies next to each other will sell that same
drug at widely different prices .

Margaret Flinter Gregory Rockson is the founder of mP harma, a nonprofit organization
that ’s seeking to address inequities in drug prices in Africa, and the
supply chain that often puts these life - saving drugs out of reach of the
people who need them. mP harma operates in four Afri can countries.
I t decided to tackle the problem by redirecting the supply chain that
forces small independent pharmacies and clinics to source their own
dru gs and hel p offers these entities a chance to outsource their
procurement for pharmaceuticals .

Gregory Rockson : We realized that if we could begin to bring together all these
independent pharmacies and remove the pressure that they have to
face in sourcing their own drugs, we can begin to address the issue of
medicine availability and affordability.

Margaret Flinter Rockson says they help improve the drug procurement supply chain
by collecting data on actual drug sales, which allows health care
entities to avoid over or under stocking, and it reduces their
vulnerability to fraud and corruption, which sadly is rampant in direct
supply chains in parts of the world.

Gregory Rockson : The beautiful thing about the service that we offer them is that not
only are w e taking ownership of the supply chain, we're also providing
the financing to purchase the inventory. We offer them a simple value
proposition. Pay o nly when you dispense the drug to the patient.
Beyond having the products available, w e actively help them manage

Dr. William Haseltine

their inventory .

Margaret Flinter Rockson says another important benefit , more affordable drug
supplies help clinicians better manage patient outcomes. mPharma
was a 2019 recipient of the Skoll Foundation's Entrepreneurship
Award .

Gregory Rockson : W ith our focus on bringing down the cost of drugs that there'll be a
systemic change that even other actors will be forced to reduce their
prices .

Margaret Flinter mPharma, a nonprofit entity that utilizes reliable data on drug usage ,
eliminates fraud and w aste in the drug supply chains, makes life -
saving medications more readily available to some of the world's most
vulnerable people, improves outcomes and saves money , n ow that’s a
bright idea.

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Mark Masselli: You've been listening to Conversations o n Health Care. I'm Mark
Masselli.

Margaret Flinter: And I'm Margaret Flinter.

Mark Masselli: Peace and Health.

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Marianne O’Hare: Conversations on Health Care is recorded at WESU at Wesleyan
University, streaming live at www.chcradio.com , iTunes, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. If you have comments, please email us at
[email protected] , or find us on Facebook or Twitter. We love
hearing from you. This show i s brought to you by the Community
Health Center.

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