Updates from the Wellcome Trust
Publications
Wellcome published two policy reports in October 2021. The first, ‘Improving global pandemic preparedness by 2025’, outlines three areas that will have the biggest impact on future global preparedness: global coordination and leadership; financing; and how to address key gaps in pandemic infrastructure.
The second, ‘Addressing COVID-19 vaccine inequity by mid-2022’, considers the challenges of the unequitable access to COVID-19 vaccines that leaves vulnerable populations unprotected. The paper describes the action G20 countries and vaccine manufacturers need to take to increase global vaccination rates.
Influenza Vaccine Roadmap (IVR)
Together with the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), Wellcome launched the Influenza Vaccine Roadmap which was supported by a series of events.
The IVR addresses the significant barriers and opportunities for preventing influenza and lays out a concise 10-year plan to leverage the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. It also aims to reduce the threat of influenza globally through improving the production and effectiveness of strain-specific seasonal influenza vaccines and by advancing the development, licensure, and production of universal influenza vaccines. The IVR provides a focused blueprint for action that will allow the world to apply the lessons learned from COVID-19 vaccine development as a springboard for launching a new era for influenza vaccine R&D.
ISARIC
With the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Wellcome has supported ISARIC, which has been instrumental in the COVID-19 response. It has developed the world’s largest COVID-19 clinical dataset by working with ISARIC partners and member networks. Today, around 750,000 individual hospitalised case reports and analyses are ongoing.
