The pandemic toll has been high: More than 3 million people dead so far worldwide and over 580,000 in the U.S.

Public officials have been challenged to respond: COVID-19 aggravated political division in our country that has bred distrust of vaccines and resistance to disease prevention efforts such as masking. The vaccine distribution process also has been disorganized at times and struggles to reach some groups.

But thanks to scientists and the government, such effective vaccines never have been developed and rolled out with such large scale and speed.

There still are challenges, but there also have been important victories in this battle and vital lessons learned. The benefit of government sharing the risk with private vaccine developers and development of an accelerated clinical trial process to measure vaccine effectiveness are among those.

On Thursday, May 20, the Columbia Basin Badger Club will discuss “Lessons from the Pandemic” during an online Zoom forum beginning at noon. We will have two speakers:

▪  Dr. April Randhawa, a staff scientist in the Fred Hutch Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division and associate director of lab science for the HIV Vaccine Trials Network and Coronavirus Prevention Network Statistical Centers.

▪  Mary Huynh, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention senior public health advisor assigned to the Washington State Department of Health, and office deputy director supporting COVID-19 vaccine distribution and response.

Together, they will discuss development and distribution of the vaccines that now protect more than half of the U.S. population over 16 with at least one dose.

Randhawa is a researcher who focuses on vaccine evaluation and immune response. At Fred Hutch, which now has 20 percent of its researchers devoted to Covid-19, she also has studied infectious diseases such as HIV, Ebola and TB. Decades of experience in those studies brought Dr. Tony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to ask Fred Hutch to design a process to test the new Covid-19 vaccines.

That led to formation of the Covid-19 Prevention Network, which agreed on the need to “harmonize” vaccine clinical trials. That meant setting a common set of questions and goals to measure success.

Randhawa and other Fred Hutch biostatisticians developed blueprints for the clinical trials for the Moderna, NovaVax, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson and Sanofi vaccines. The Pfizer-BioNTech partnership did its own evaluation process.

Harmonizing assures that the trials equitably represent people from different races, ethnicity, ages and pre-existing conditions. Not only is this important in evaluating vaccine effectiveness, it also is important to develop trust in the vaccines, Randhawa explained.

She said the studies were designed to determine biological measurements such as levels of antibodies and infection-fighting blood cells that prevent disease. These “correlates of protection” also will allow future trials of vaccines to fight Covid-19’s variants to be done in half the time and with only several hundred rather than 30,000 people.

Huynh has been involved in CDC immunization programs for 12 of the 15 years she’s worked with the agency. She previously worked in CDC’s Vaccines for Children Program in Atlanta, and as an immunization field assignee in Guam supporting U.S.-affiliated Pacific islands.

Early days of the national vaccination program were marked with confusion and tight supplies. Huynh and others with the Washington Department of Health had to set up vaccination sites without being sure how much vaccine would be available from the federal government.

While early vaccinations were available on a frustrating first-come basis, the state vaccination program now offers vaccines on an appointment basis, both online and by phone. In some cases, vaccination sites are being set up at work sites, and the state is working to overcome vaccine hesitancy and to reach diverse communities.

Washington so far has delivered about 5.15 million vaccine doses and fully vaccinated 28 percent of its population, and vaccines are available to everyone over 16 years old. It’s a race to beat what appears to be a fourth wave of this deadly disease.

You can register for this event at columbiabasinbadgers.com to receive a confirmation and link to complete registration on Zoom. Cost is $5 for nonmembers, while club members can join for free.

This story was originally published May 17, 2021 at 1:58 PM with the headline "Over a year into the pandemic, what have we learned? | Guest Opinion."