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The UN health agency says the emergency use list “opens the door” for countries to speed up their vaccine approval processes.
The World Health Organization has listed Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, a critical step that, according to the United Nations health agency, aims to make the vaccine more available in countries. Developing.
In a statement Thursday, the WHO said its validation of the vaccine, the first since the start of the pandemic, “opens the door for countries to accelerate their own regulatory approval processes to import and administer the vaccine.”
It will also allow groups, such as UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organization, “to acquire the vaccine to distribute it to countries in need,” WHO said.
“This is a very positive step to ensure global access to COVID-19 vaccines,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO Deputy Director General for Access to Medicines and Health Products, said in the statement.
“But I want to emphasize the need for an even greater global effort to achieve a sufficient vaccine supply to meet the needs of priority populations everywhere.”
Boxes of Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccines arrive at an undisclosed location in Nicosia, Cyprus, on December 26, 2020. [Stavros Ioannides/PIO/Handout via Reuters]
The WHO said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine met its safety requirements and its benefits outweighed any potential risks.
The vaccine, which must be kept at ultra-low temperatures, is already being administered in several countries, including the United States, Canada, Qatar, Bahrain and Mexico.
Human rights groups have expressed concern that richer countries “hoard” vaccines at the expense of developing nations.
A recent report by Amnesty International found that all of Moderna Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccines and 96 percent of Pfizer-BioNtech doses had been insured by wealthy countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
“Many countries have seen the vaccine, understandably, as a way out of this crisis and it has been a race,” Stephen Cockburn, Amnesty’s chief of economic and social justice, told Al Jazeera this month.
“Instead of working together, we have had a ‘me first’ attitude in many countries and there has been a lack of multilateralism and global coordination in the world.”
Healthcare workers hold syringes with Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Nitra University Hospital, Slovakia, December 26, 2020 [Radovan Stoklasa/Reuters]
Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director John Nkengasong also warned that Africa might not see vaccines until after the second quarter of 2021.
Nkengasong called it a “moral issue” and urged the UN to convene a special session to discuss the ethical and fair distribution of vaccines to avoid “this North-South mistrust of vaccines, which is a common good.”
The UN health agency, with the GAVI Vaccine Alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), spearheads a global effort called COVAX to secure and distribute vaccines to the poorest countries, to ensure that vaccines do not go only to nations. rich.
The WHO-backed COVAX alliance has deals for nearly two billion doses, with the first deliveries due in early 2021.
The alliance has been in talks with Pfizer and BioNTech to secure the vaccine.
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