As soon as the Chinese government released the genetic code of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in January 2020, vaccine developers swung into action to make effective vaccines in record time. Clinical trials began within a few months, phase 3 clinical trials by the summer, and by November, Pfizer had submitted an emergency use authorization request to the US Food and Drug Administration. A vaccine that might typically take years or even decades to develop took less than a year.

But it was still a full year between the pandemic’s onset and the beginning of mass vaccine distribution, a year in which millions of people have died, global poverty has spiked, and people everywhere have suffered. Is there a way society could have invested in advance — before the pandemic even started — in research that would have made the vaccines happen faster? Is there a way governments can invest now so that the world is more prepared for the next pandemic?

Yes, argues a February article in NPJ Vaccines, a journal affiliated with Nature. The piece, by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, argues that there are steps governments can take now so when the next pandemic hits, the world has effective vaccines much faster — as well as the factories needed to make billions of doses.

Here are some key principles for how the world can vaccinate faster in a pandemic:

  1. Invest in platforms, not in specific vaccines
  2. Develop vaccines against “prototype pathogens”
  3. Don’t pay pharma companies based on how many doses people use
  4. Help pharmaceutical companies collaborate on early-stage research and development
  5. But don’t leave vaccine development to the private sector

Read the full article about expediting vaccine development by Kelsey Piper at Vox.