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GENEVA / ZURICH (Reuters) – The promise of COVID-19 vaccines is “phenomenal” and “potentially revolutionary,” World Health Organization European Director Hans Kluge said on Thursday, a day after Britain seized. became the first Western country to approve an injection. .
Britain approved Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine, developed with Germany’s BioNTech, beating the world in the race to start the most crucial mass inoculation program in history.
Speaking from Copenhagen, Kluge said vaccine supplies would be very limited at first and countries must decide who gets priority, although the WHO also cited a “growing consensus” that the first recipients should be older people, medical workers and people. with other diseases, like Great Britain. plans.
The new coronavirus still has the potential to cause “enormous damage,” Kluge said, but “the future looks brighter,” as other candidate vaccines, including Moderna and AstraZeneca, have also shown positive results in trials.
“The more candidates we have, the more chances of success,” Kluge told a news conference. “Vaccines, combined with other public health measures, put the end of an acute phase of the pandemic and the reconstruction of economies within reach.”
The EU regulator itself, in response to Britain’s swift approval of the Pfizer injection, has said its own longer procedure was more appropriate and required more evidence. EU and US approval separately could arrive in days or weeks.
A WHO official, who was asked about different regulatory processes, said the global health agency and the European Medicines Agency had asked Britain to share the documents it used in its approval to help speed up evaluations of the other agencies.
Sharing could build trust among people who will eventually be targeted by vaccines, Siddhartha Datta, manager of the WHO program for vaccine-preventable diseases, told reporters.
“This decision is an important decision by any of the national regulatory authorities, because it will instill confidence in the system,” Datta said. “It is extremely important that this process is robust, the process is evidence-based and a decision is being made and shared in a transparent manner.”
WHO has already received data from Pfizer and BioNTech on the vaccine and was reviewing it for a “possible list for emergency use” that could be a benchmark for use by other nations.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and John Miller; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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