This HIV Vaccine Awareness Day a global audience is fixated on the need for vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic has people struggling to understand the science, the development process and the necessity of a vaccine. Taking in these lessons is no less vital for HIV. AVAC’s new report, Five “P”s to Watch: Platforms, process, partnerships, payers and participatory practices that drive vaccine development, connects these key issues and lays out how HIV vaccine research is making the search for a COVID-19 vaccine faster, smarter and more inclusive.

The connections between HIV and COVID-19 research offer unprecedented opportunities to tell the story of vaccine research. Read Five “P”s to Watch to help tell that story: a durable, sustainable end to HIV depends on a vaccine, and investment in HIV has created the know-how leveraged today against COVID-19—on multiple levels.

AVAC has other essential resources for HVAD 2020!

Check out our dedicated page on HVAD 2020, featuring a toolkit and details on related webinars to support advocacy and action, including:

• Key Messages: Frames priorities and unique opportunities for vaccine advocacy for HIV, COVID-19 and future epidemics.
• Full: This complete set of messages provides more detail and background on priority messages.
• Short: The short form of key messages distills priorities into a curated set of quick and easy-to-use statements.
• Social Media Package: Draft messages and images we hope you’ll use to extend the reach of our collective messaging this HVAD.
• HIV Vaccines, An Introductory Factsheet: Basic information on concepts and trials in vaccine research.
• Webinar with Science Magazine’s Jon Cohen. Download the recording to hear Jon talk about the fast-growing pipeline of vaccine candidates for COVID-19, how COVID-19 research is evolving and building on HIV vaccine research and more!
• AVAC’s latest podcast episode of Px Pulse features leading voices from HIV vaccine and prevention research talking about the intersection of HIV and COVID-19.
• Watch for an upcoming June webinar with NIH’s Vaccine Research Center for updates on the COVID-19 vaccine pipeline and more!

Let HVAD 2020 be a day you find inspiration and tools to lend your voice to the story of vaccine research, development and delivery – for HIV, COVID-19 and global health generally.

This HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD), May 18, 2020, is like no other before. HIV and COVID-19 each present a vivid picture of the need for the vaccine enterprise. A durable, sustainable end to any epidemic depends on a vaccine. HVAD is a day to call attention to the still urgent need for an HIV vaccine, take stock of progress, recognize the incalculable contributions of trial participants and researchers—and, this year, to explain how work in HIV has created the foundation for the unprecedented speed of COVID-19 vaccine development. Looking to the future, this HVAD also presents an opportunity to advocate for the global capacity and collaboration needed for the next epidemic.

AVAC is proud to share our dedicated page on HVAD 2020, featuring a toolkit and details on related webinars to support advocacy and action, including:

Key Messages

Frames priorities and unique opportunities for vaccine advocacy for HIV, COVID and future epidemics.

• Full: This complete set of messages provides more detail and background on priority messages
• Short: The short form of key messages distills priorities into a curated set of quick and easy-to-use statements

Other Materials

• Social Media Package: Draft messages and images we hope you’ll use to extend the reach of our collective messaging this HVAD
• HIV Vaccines, An Introductory Factsheet: Basic information on concepts and trials in vaccine research

Coming Soon

As part of the HVAD programming at AVAC we have more rolling out in the days to come!

• May 13, we are hosting a webinar with Science Magazine’s Jon Cohen. Jon will talk about the fast-growing pipeline of vaccine candidates for COVID-19, how COVID research is evolving and building on HIV vaccine research and more! [Update: Recording now available.]
• On Thursday, May 14, we’re launching our next episode of the AVAC podcast Px Pulse—looking at the intersection of HIV and COVID-19 with a special focus on vaccine development.
• On Monday, May 18, watch for a suite of infographics and our new report, 5Ps to Watch: A Look at the Process, Platforms, Partnerships, Pounds (and Rands and Euros and Dollars), and Participatory Practices—each of these “Ps” must be done right in response to HIV, COVID-19 and the epidemics of the future.

We hope these tools will help your advocacy this HIV Vaccine Awareness Day. As advocates and researchers, donors and activists, we all know an HIV vaccine is imperative to end the epidemic, now more than ever.

[UPDATE: Webinar recording now available; click here.]

Six months? A year? Longer? Never? How long until there’s a vaccine against COVID-19? How is COVID vaccine research moving so quickly? How do HIV vaccine and COVID-19 vaccine research relate and inform each other? How do we ensure COVID research happens quickly and ethically?

As we approach HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD) on May 18, these questions are driving how we think about the ever-evolving global advocacy agenda.

Please join us for a webinar on Wednesday, May 13 at 10am ET to discuss all of this with Jon Cohen, one of the leading journalists covering both HIV and COVID.

Jon is a Science staff writer, award-winning journalist and author of Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine. Jon will discuss the rapidly growing pipeline of COVID vaccine candidates and share insights on how the HIV vaccine field has laid the groundwork for this — along with how COVID research can contribute to the ongoing search for an HIV vaccine.

We’ll also discuss some of the thornier issues emerging in COVID research: just yesterday, the WHO issued a report stating that well-designed “human challenge” studies could accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development. The report articulates important criteria for assessing a challenge study, but they left out the most important one: Until there is an approved treatment, a challenge trial with a potentially fatal and as-yet untreatable pathogen is unacceptable. See AVAC and TAG’s statement on the report here.

And stay tuned for details an upcoming webinar in June featuring representatives from the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center who will discuss some of their leading COVID vaccine candidates, including mRNA candidates, an approach also used in HIV vaccine research.

For the latest on COVID-19 and HIV, visit our special page—www.avac.org/covid—which includes pipeline updates, how COVID-19 is affecting HIV vaccine and prevention research, previous call recordings and more.

The latest installment of AVAC’s podcast, , is up. In this episode, AVAC puts a spotlight on HVTN 702, or Uhambo, one of the most anticipated HIV vaccine efficacy trials in the field. Data show the vaccine tested is safe, but vaccinations were stopped early after a scheduled review showed it did not offer protection.

The news delivered disappointment to local communities, to the thousands of South Africans who participated in the study, and to the field worldwide. Meanwhile, the trial team will continue to follow participants over the next year to monitor safety and gather data to help answer urgent questions raised by the trial results. While the vaccine in the trial did not work, the trial was extremely well-conducted and got an answer quickly.

In this episode of Px Pulse:

• HVTN 702 Protocol Co-chair and AVAC Board Member, Linda-Gail Bekker, explores what the trial team hopes to learn during the follow-up period and how these answers might impact the ongoing pursuit for an HIV vaccine;
• AVAC’s Regional Stakeholder Engagement Advisor, Nandisile Luthuli, also joins the conversation to shed light on the trial team’s plans for continuing community engagement;
• and AVAC’s Director of Research Engagement, Stacey Hannah, talks about the successes of the trial.

For more resources on the issue go to AVAC.org’s HVTN 702 Updates and Next Steps.

For the full podcast episode, highlights and more resources, visit avac.org/px-pulse. And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts!

Leaders of HVTN 702 HIV vaccine efficacy trial in South Africa (also known as Uhambo), announced that vaccinations would be stopped early because the vaccine candidate did not prevent HIV. Importantly, there were no safety concerns. Since then, conversations have ensued—from local and global levels—to understand the result and its implications for the future of HIV vaccine development.

AVAC and Advocacy for the Prevention of HIV and AIDS (APHA) held a global webinar on Wednesday, February 19 to reflect on this news and how that may impact HIV prevention globally.

Listen to the recording of the webinar here.

The call provided civil society perspectives from APHA and the Vaccine Resource Advocacy Group (VARG), updates from HVTN 702 researchers, and broader context of HIV vaccine development from the United States NIH’s Division of AIDS (DAIDS).

HVTN 702 is one of several Phase III vaccine trials ongoing at this time. HVTN 705/ HPX2008 (Imbokodo), HVTN 706/HPX3002 (Mosaico) and the PrEPVacc Study are all exploring novel HIV vaccine candidates. Broadly neutralizing antibodies and additional ARV-based prevention options are also in large-scale trials. Though the failure to find efficacy with HVTN 702 represents a disappointment, unflagging momentum in research must continue. It’s crucial to understand these results and the scientific contribution they will make to a future, urgently needed vaccine.

See AVAC’s updated infographics for a visual picture of the pipeline of research on biomedical HIV prevention:

• The Years Ahead in Biomedical HIV Prevention Research
• HIV Vaccine Research Pipeline
• Vaccine Efficacy Trials Pipeline

For additional background on the HVTN 702 trial, check out the HVTN’s fact sheet.

As always, please be in touch with any questions!