Uganda making progress on COVID vaccine development

HEALTH | NATION ADDRESS | COVID-19 VACCINE

Uganda is making progress in the development of her COVID-19 vaccine, Prof. Pontiano Kaleebu, the executive director of the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), has said.  

Kaleebu made the revelation during President Yoweri Museveni’s address to the country Wednesday evening. The President had invited Kaleebu to shed more light on the progress that Uganda had made in the development of its own COVID-19 vaccine. 

Kaleebu told the country that scientists at UVRI led by Dr. Jenifer Serwanga and Dr. Sheila Balinda were working on two vaccines i.e. the inactivated vaccine and a vector-based one. 

“We are working on two vaccines for COVID-19. One is inactivated vaccine and the other one is using a vector, call it a vehicle to carry parts of the COVID-19 virus,” Kaleebu said. 

Explaining how the inactivated virus is developed, Kaleebu said: “The vaccine works by deceiving the body. The body thinks it has been invaded by the real virus, yet this one is modified not to cause disease. It switches on an immune system so that it produces soldiers, antibodies, and T cells.

"So you inactivate the virus but retain its structure. For the Covid-19 virus, you inactivate the spike, the outside part that it uses to attack our cells.” 

He said the team of scientists at UVRI had completed the inactivation of the virus and were now at the stage of purifying it. 

“After inactivating the virus, you purify it and after purifying it, you add it to other chemicals that will allow us to stimulate the immune systems.

"So where we are, our scientists have got the virus from infected individuals and grown it.  Now it is being purified and the results we got show us that we just need to purify it a little bit more,” Kaleebu said. 

He said after the purification stage, the scientists will introduce vaccines in Swiss mice whose genes have been humanized to test their effectiveness. The mice on which the vaccines will be tested were procured from the US in 2021 at a cost of sh8m each.

Kaleebu revealed that the testing of the vaccine in mice will be done in conjunction with a team from Makerere University. 

“You use the vaccine, inject mice, and then challenge them to see if it works. Then after that, you need to go into humans. That is a big step because you need to produce the vaccine under good manufacturing practices. You follow the international regulation, and ensure it is pure, and well documented. That is the step where we need to go to and then on to the humans,” he said. 

For the vector-based vaccine, Kaleebu said the scientists had produced an adrenal virus from monkeys that cannot infect humans but can be used as a vehicle to carry parts of the coronavirus for research purposes.  

“And the adrenal virus is what scientists use to produce AstraZeneca; but we wanted to get ours because when we get it, it will also be used for research on other diseases. I think the key feature here is developing capacity for the future and infrastructure,” he said. 

Background 

Uganda started the process of developing her own COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, a year after the outbreak of COVID-19.

By that time, developed countries like the US and the UK had already discovered vaccines, but they were not available in developing countries, such as Uganda, yet the pandemic was raging.  

The UN secretary general and international humanitarian agencies raised the red flag over what they described as vaccine apartheid as developing countries were not accessing medicines for vaccination.

It was against such background that Uganda and African countries such as South Africa, Ghana, and Egypt decided to fund the development of their own vaccine.  In February, science and technology minister Dr. Monica Musenero told MPs that the Government had so far spent sh5.7b on the development of the vaccine.  

In January 2021, President Museveni launched clinical trials for UBV-01N, a Ugandan COVID-19 treatment drug developed by Ugandan scientists.  

UBV-01N was developed by Ugandan scientists in collaboration with Mulago Hospital, the Ministry of Health Uganda, and Makerere University, among others. 

Dr. Kaleebu also revealed that several herbal viral treatment products were showing good signs in their laboratories. So far, only COVIDEX that was developed by Prof. Peter Ogwang is used in the treatment of COVID-19. 

Do not fear 

Information minister Dr. Chris Baryomunsi said Ugandan scientists who are working on the COVID-19 vaccine are on the right path because the vaccines which were developed outside Uganda also go through the same process. 

He also assured Ugandans that the vaccines were safe because they are taken through various processes before being approved for use on humans. 

During his address to the country last evening, President Museveni spoke about coffee value addition, solutions to fuel shortages, and crime in the country, especially murder. He said people behind the recent murders in the country would be arrested.