A vaccine against Covid-19 could be ready by the end of 2020, said the head of the World Health Organization (WHO).
“There is hope,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting of WHO executives gathered to discuss the global response to the pandemic.
“We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we can have a vaccine.”
There are currently nine experimental vaccines in the pipeline from the WHO-led global vaccine facility Covax, which aims to distribute two billion doses by the end of 2021.
Some 168 countries have so far joined the Covax program, but China, the United States and Russia are not among them.
Mr. Tedros urged countries to work together to fight the disease, saying the most important factor in finding a vaccine was “the political commitment of our leaders, especially in the equitable distribution of vaccines.”
He said: “We need each other, we need solidarity and we need to use all the energy we have to fight the virus.”
Drug manufacturers and public health agencies around the world are rushing to develop a vaccine, which is seen as crucial to controlling the pandemic.
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China is in talks with the WHO to have the global health body evaluate its locally produced Covid-19 vaccines, as a step towards their availability for international use, a WHO official said.
Meanwhile, the EU health regulator has launched a real-time review of a vaccine developed by US drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, which is expected to speed up the approval process by allowing researchers to present findings without waiting for the studies are completed.
The two companies entered into final-stage talks with Europe last month to supply the bloc with up to 300 million doses of its potential coronavirus vaccine.
That follows a similar announcement last week that the approval of rival AstraZeneca’s jab could also be sped up. AstraZeneca has already signed a deal for up to 400 million doses of its vaccine.
In Africa, there are currently 15 vaccine clinical trials underway. Five trials are underway in South Africa, four in Egypt, and a single trial in Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
African nations have come together to fight the pandemic, with painful memories of the deaths of millions of Africans in the decade it took for affordable HIV drugs to become available on the continent.
On Tuesday, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Vir Biotechnology also announced that testing of their possible coronavirus treatment will move to phase three.
The Comet-Ice study is evaluating Vir-7831 for the early treatment of Covid-19 in patients who are at high risk of being transferred to the hospital.
The treatment is an antibody that was selected based on its ability to neutralize the virus. It is also believed to kill infected cells, provide a high barrier to resistance, and reach high concentrations in the lungs.
Following the encouraging results from the early stages of the trial, the study will now expand globally to additional sites in North America, South America, and Europe.
