‘Groundbreaking’ Adelaide vaccine may lead in blocking COVID transmission

A Flinders COVID vaccine shows a critical ability that will help the world achieve herd immunity - but it was snubbed by Australia’s government, its creator says.

A “groundbreaking” vaccine developed in Adelaide prevents the COVID-19 virus from being spread from infected animals to those that haven’t been exposed – a vital step to creating the herd immunity that could open Australia to the world.

Professor Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University, who has taken his work overseas because of insufficient backing from the federal government, said the “very exciting” results were world-leading but needed major financial support to go to human trials.

AstraZeneca, being produced in Australia by CSL, did not stop the virus being passed on, he said. He estimated that with $50 million from Canberra, human trials could test whether his Covax-19 vaccine candidate was as effective in people and potentially allow for local manufacturing by the end of the year.

The issue of whether vaccines limit transmission of the virus is a key one identified by Prime Minister Scott Morrison as a reason that Australia needs to remain shut off to the world.

Mr Morrison said there was not enough evidence on how the current crop of vaccines reduced transmission to wind back Australia’s quarantine requirements.

Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky. Picture: Matt Turner

“We don’t as of yet have considerable clinical evidence that tells us transmission is preventable … and so, we’ve just got to wait for the numbers to come in on that, but at this point in time I think Australians want to ­ensure that the way we’re living at the moment is maintained,” he said, in an interview with News Corp Australia.

Prof Petrovsky said Canberra had shunned his work in favour of the unsuccessful Queensland University vaccine and the AstraZeneca immuniser which has lower efficacy than some other vaccines and also links to blood clotting.

“We haven’t given up – that’s the what the government wanted us to do,” said Prof Petrovsky, a strident critic of what he called Canberra’s failed attempt to pick winners and east coast bias.

He said colleagues in Kazakhstan uniquely tested not only whether the Adelaide vaccine candidate would protect hamsters given the virus, but whether in a highly contagious environment the infected animals would pass it to those without the vaccine.

“In this case, our vaccine was 100 per cent effective at stopping the first animal getting infected or getting sick,” he said.

“They didn’t lose weight, they didn’t shed the virus.

“But it also meant you could put another animal in the cage at the same time and it didn’t get infected.”

He added that his original vaccine against the Wuhan strain of the virus had now been developed into multiple versions, which together were designed to deal with all the new variants emerging around the world.

This was done by adjusting the vaccine using data from gene-sequencing technology. “Because of our technology we can make the vaccine from a synthetic gene, so we never have to touch the virus, fortunately,” he said.

Prof Petrovsky has received one grant of $1 million from Canberra but failed to attract significant funding, despite his success in the past in winning US Government grants worth tens of millions of dollars for vaccine development.

While he said it was hoped current vaccines would be effective against the mutated strains, that remained uncertain.

“But it if turns out we do need a vaccine against one or more of the variants, then we already have it developed,” he said.

He also questioned whether Australians should accept AstraZeneca shots when Denmark had stopped the vaccine completely, citing clotting rates of one in 40,000, much higher than figures to date in Australia.

He said the figures also indicated there was little difference in risk for those under or over 50 – it was an equal problem for both – and given the absence of the virus in the community it was questionable whether the risks were worth the benefits.

Professor Petrovsky said a Phase 1 trial of his Covax-19 vaccine had been shown to cause no harm to people, but whether it was effective could only be shown in Phase 2/3 trials which required large numbers of people from an infected country.

That typically cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, and while he gave no details, citing commercial confidences, he said he was working with “overseas interests” to try to get to this stage. “We’re looking to transfer the technology overseas and undertake the clinical trials there.”

The vaccine itself is already being made in small quantities in order to be tested on the animals, but a big capital injection is needed to scale up production to allow human trials.

Two RAH coronavirus patients stable

Two people are in a stable condition at the Royal Adelaide Hospital with coronavirus.

A man in his 30s was admitted to hospital on Saturday – a day after a woman, also in her 30s, was taken to the RAH.

It comes as a further two cases of COVID-19 were recorded in South Australia yesterday.

A man in his 70s and a woman in her 60s both acquired their infections overseas.

The man has been in a medi-hotel since he arrived and the woman is considered an old infection. There are now 26 active cases in SA.