Faster vaccine approvals—and the political will to make them happen

What would it take to make the approval of new medicines and vaccines faster? In 2022, I worked on a paper for the ESCAP–WHO “From Lab to Jab” research initiative that approached this question through the experience of COVID-19. The aim was to identify lessons that could help regulators in the Asia-Pacific region prepare for the next emergency, but also improve the way they work in more ordinary times.

The paper examines how national regulatory agencies cooperate: sharing information and expertise, dividing up work, and drawing on assessments carried out by trusted counterparts. These arrangements matter because regulatory capacity is expensive to build, and there is little sense in duplicating work that another capable authority has already done. The challenge is to make better use of that work while retaining responsibility for sound decisions.

The difference was political urgency

For me, the most striking lesson was the political urgency behind the effort to find, approve and roll out a vaccine. Governments needed a way out of the pandemic. Resources were mobilised, decisions were prioritised, and delays that might once have been accepted as routine became much harder to tolerate.

That urgency did not create the science or the regulatory expertise. It did, however, give people a powerful reason to use the tools available to them and to work together at a pace that would have previously been inconceivable. Faster approval need not mean abandoning scrutiny. It can also mean removing avoidable duplication, improving coordination and giving regulators the resources they need to do their jobs.

My concern is that much of that political urgency has since receded. For people waiting for other cures and treatments, the need has hardly become less urgent. I would like to see more of the determination shown during the pandemic carried into the everyday business of making effective medicines available.

We should learn from what regulators managed to achieve under exceptional pressure, and ask which improvements we can make permanent. It would be a pity if the next global emergency were what it took to concentrate minds again.

Read the paper

Regulatory Cooperation in Vaccines in Asia-Pacific Region, Simon Lacey and No Name, 17 June 2022.

Download the full report (PDF)

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