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Comment by Vecr | Hacker News Reader

Nice idea, but there's no way something like this would pass FDA. Even for the live VSV Ebola vaccine that contains no Ebola at all in it, except for the encoded spike, it's recommended for a doctor to do administration, and it's not commercially available, so you have to justify your need for it to the federal government. You are also supposed to avoid close contact with anyone else for quite a while after, to prevent transmission of the vaccine virus.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/vacc-specific/ebo...

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That's ok, though; the US hardly sees any malaria, and the cases that do present here are typically contracted in other countries. It can spread here, and we shouldn't be complacent, but the US isn't where a vaccine is needed.

Does the FDA have to approve it for American NGOs to distribute it internationally? Definitely would make more of a difference to African and India

I don't think so, especially if it's nominally part of a trial. US Ebola drugs and vaccines were used in Africa before approval.

No it only requires the approval of the destination country. But in the case of Ebola, some of those countries didn't have an established infrastructure to run trials so the WHO initially hesitated. But in the end they got Merck to run the trials and FDA and EMA to evaluate the results.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/07/inside-story-scientists-...

An RNA vaccine is starting human trials next year, and likely won't have these problems.

https://academictimes.com/first-vaccine-to-fully-immunize-ag...

It'd be a great silver lining for this pandemic to turn out to be the kickstart for a new generation of vaccines to curb malaria and such

Pfizer is working on a Lyme vaccine which is increasingly sorely needed.

Would be nice to see a better Dengue Fever vaccine too.

There's an article in Wired arguing it's helped fix the economics of that https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-vaccines-economics

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