The race for a coronavirus treatment is fanning fears of 'vaccine nationalism'

Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi, Alexis Christoforous, and Anjalee Khemlani discuss the latest coronavirus news and the race for a vaccine.

Video Transcript

- All right, we hit a grim milestone this week in the fight against COVID-19. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases this week has topped five million worldwide. The death toll now stands at 333,000. Here in the US, states are continuing to expand their reopenings. President Trump yesterday toward a Ford factory in Michigan, where he said, quote, "We are not closing our country if the US is hit by a second wave of coronavirus infections." Anjalee Khemlani is joining us now for more.

Anjalee, the pandemic has quickly become politicized, not only in this country but around the world, and that's leading to something called vaccine nationalism. Tell us what that is. And how might it impede our ability to come up with a vaccine for this virus?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Right. Well, right now vaccines are seen as sort of the new political football globally. We're going to wait to see how it turns out. We've already seen some of that tussle and some of that strain. Earlier, we saw when Sanofi had discussed its vaccine, which it's doing in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline, and how that vaccine would be given preference to the US first because of the investment of the government there.

Meanwhile, you have a global race between China, the UK, and the US, and those are the three that are sort of furthest along in their pursuits. And they've already sort of detailed all these global aspirations in terms of distribution. But that could be tempered somewhat, and there are concerns that those could be tempered if governments do in fact get involved.

I had someone tell me earlier this week that when there is an emergency situation, that actually gives extra power to the national governments to sort of take control. So even if a company wants to direct it in a direction, that could be changed by any world leader. And so that's one of the concerns right now.

Again, going back to the Sanofi issue, we saw that where the French government heard that and there was a backlash over that. They had to have a meeting. Meanwhile, we've seen how some of the companies are working closely with China and the tensions that that's creating for whether or not, you know, the US will try to take-- we saw this discussion really rise up the first time with Gilead with its treatment, right? And so it's not just in the vaccine space. It's right now drugs at large.

But some of the companies have already taken that to heart. Moderna, for example, said in its press release that it's planning to have its vaccine for use worldwide, AstraZeneca talking about having it widely accessible around the world, Pfizer saying ensuring rapid worldwide access, Johnson and Johnson talking about availability and affordability globally, and then Sanofi, again, prioritizing global access. So really having a lot going on with that and just a wait-and-see situation. The companies insist that they're ready to do it globally. But in the background, those geopolitical tensions are playing a role.

- All right. And Anjalee, more than 100 vaccine trials currently underway right now as scientists around the world race to find a cure for COVID-19. Anjalee Khemlani, thanks for that.