The pandemic of the new coronavirus is causing serious economic losses to the world. Infectious diseases that have caused pandemics in recent years include Ebola hemorrhagic fever, influenza A virus (H5N1 subtype), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and the new corona virus. There are about 1.7 million unknown viruses in mammals and birds. It is estimated that 630,000 of the 1.7 million species can infect humans. More than 200 types of infectious diseases have been identified caused by pathogens that infect animals and humans. Lesser known is that more than five new zoonotic diseases occur each year. It is speculated that new viruses will occur one after another.
What we learned from this pandemic was that vaccines could not be supplied smoothly even if we left it to four major pharmaceutical companies in the United States and the United Kingdom and pharmaceutical companies in China. With this new type of coronavirus infection, the development of a vaccine unique to Japan has become urgent. In addition, vaccines have become necessary for Southeast Asian countries, not to mention the case of Taiwan. Preparing the production system as a region in Asia is also important for the safety and security of the region. An option is to work with the country conducting the clinical trial to create a vaccine production system that can be supplied to Asian countries.
It has been found that the development of domestic vaccines is also important in terms of national security and national security. The Government of Japan has also included the "Emergency Development Fund for Vaccine Production System, etc." of 137.1 billion yen in the second supplementary budget for FY2020. We have put in place a system to support companies wishing to develop vaccines. There are several companies that have accepted the public offering. Pharmaceutical companies such as KM Biologics, Daiichi Sankyo, Takeda Pharmaceutical, AstraZeneca, and Shionogi have made a name for themselves. Among them, Daiichi Sankyo is able to produce in small quantities by using messenger RNA. This corona vaccine uses the same method as Pfizer and US Moderna. The method using messenger RNA can be developed faster than conventional vaccines. We would like to work together with Asian countries to build a system for making vaccines for Asia.
Remarks 100 yen is 1 dollar.