A ‘safe and effective’ vaccine against the novel coronavirus disease could be ready by the end of the year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. “We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we can have a vaccine. There is hope,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the WHO executive board meeting.
The WHO Director-General also called for solidarity and political commitment from all leaders to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines when available. “We need each other, we need solidarity and we need to use all the energy we have to fight the virus,” he said.
Nine experimental vaccines are in the pipeline of the WHO-led global COVAX vaccine facility. “Especially for vaccines and other products that are in development, the most important tool is the political commitment of our leaders, especially in the equitable distribution of vaccines,” said Tedros.
The COVAX facility, run by WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance, a public-private partnership, provides access to candidate COVID-19 vaccines in development. Countries that join COVAX will have access to a broad portfolio of new candidate vaccines to combat COVID-19. So far, some 168 countries have joined the COVAX facility, but neither China, the United States, nor Russia are among them.
The GAVI vaccine alliance board previously approved up to $ 150 million to help 92 low- and middle-income countries prepare for the delivery of future COVID-19 vaccines, including technical assistance and cold chain equipment.
All eyes on the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine
The European drug regulator on Tuesday began an early review of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE. The process, called “continuous review,” will allow the European Medicines Agency to observe vaccine performance in real time as trial data emerge, rather than waiting for drug manufacturers to ship everything at once.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration told coronavirus vaccine developers on Tuesday that they would need at least two months of safety data after a full vaccination regimen to review emergency use authorization requests from an experimental vaccine.
Pfizer previously said it will seek regulatory approval for its vaccine starting in October. Companies have been granted a rapid review in the US “We believe that the independence of the US FDA is more important today than ever as public confidence in the development of the COVID19 vaccine is it has been eroded by the politicization of the process, “said Pfizer Inc. CEO Albert Bourla.
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