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by Nina LARSON
As the world celebrates advances in vaccines against the new coronavirus, a leading WHO expert warned in an interview with AFP that public distrust ran the risk of rendering even the most effective treatments against the pandemic useless.
“A vaccine that is put in a freezer or refrigerator or shelf and not used does nothing to help shorten this pandemic,” said Kate O’Brien, director of the immunization department at the World Health Organization. .
US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced Monday that their potential vaccine had shown 90 percent efficacy in preventing Covid-19 infections in ongoing end-phase trials involving more than 40,000 people.
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O’Brien praised the interim results as “extremely important” and expressed hope that preliminary data will soon be obtained from a handful of other vaccine candidates in equally advanced trials.
If the full data shows that “one or more of these vaccines has very, very substantial efficacy, that’s really good news to put another tool in the toolbox” to fight the pandemic, he said.
But with the pandemic continuing to escalate after around 1.3 million lives have already been claimed, he expressed deep concern about growing signs of vacillation in vaccines, with misinformation and distrust staining acceptance of scientific advances by part of the people.
“We are not going to be successful as a world in controlling the pandemic with the use of vaccines as one of the tools unless people are willing to get vaccinated,” O’Brien said.
More needs to be done to increase “public confidence that the vaccines the WHO is evaluating will not compromise safety or efficacy,” he said.
– ‘Climbing Everest’ -O’Brien acknowledged that there were a number of outstanding questions about the candidate vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech and its peers, including the duration of protection against the virus.
And while vaccine candidates are being tested to determine how effectively and safely they protect people against developing the disease, it is not clear whether they actually prevent asymptomatic infection and transmission of the virus.
A big question, he said, is, “Does your likelihood of transmitting to someone else change?”
Despite outstanding questions, WHO is betting that one or more vaccines will get approval soon, followed by a rapid expansion of production and distribution.
Anticipating the huge demand for any approved vaccine, the UN health agency has helped create the so-called Covax facility to ensure equitable distribution.
But even with gigantic efforts, it will be a while before there are enough doses for everyone, and the WHO has set guidelines on how to prioritize distribution.
“The goal here is for all countries to be able to immunize 20 percent of their population by the end of 2021,” O’Brien said.
That, he said, would go a long way toward providing protection to health workers and the most vulnerable populations, as well as those essential to keeping societies functioning, such as teachers.
After that, how quickly everyone else can access a vaccine will largely depend on the country they live in and whether their government has made agreements to access vaccines that get approved.
“We would expect many more doses in 2022,” O’Brien said.
Meanwhile, the logistical challenges of getting approved vaccines to the billions of people who need them are daunting, from manufacturing to ensuring transportation and storage at the extremely low temperatures some of the candidates require.
“A vaccine that is highly effective and safe … is still valuable for public health impact if it really reaches the people it needs to protect and is widely used in populations,” O’Brien said.
Developing a safe and effective vaccine “is like setting up a base camp on Everest,” he said.
“But getting to the shock of vaccines is (like) having to climb Everest.”
nl / rjm / spm
© 1994-2020 Agence France-Presse
/ AFP
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