The executive director of the World Health Organization (WHO) emergency program, Mike Ryan, speaks at a press conference on the new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Denis Balibouse | Reuters
The World Health Organization on Monday applauded data recently released by researchers from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca on a possible coronavirus vaccine, but warned that it is still early and more evidence of its effectiveness is needed.
“This is good news,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO emergency program, at a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva, shortly after the data was published in The Lancet. “By generating T-cell responses and generating neutralizing antibodies, this is a positive result. But again, there is a long way to go. Now we have to move to real-world trials on a larger scale.”
The phase one trial had more than 1,000 participants in people ages 18 to 55. The Oxford researchers said the vaccine produced antibodies and killer T cells to fight the infection that lasted at least two months.
The vaccine was also found to be well tolerated and there were no serious adverse events. Fatigue and headache were the most commonly reported side effects, the researchers said. Other common side effects include pain at the injection site, muscle pain, chills, and fever.
“The immune system has two ways to find and attack pathogens: antibody and T-cell responses,” Oxford professor Andrew Pollard said in a statement earlier that day. “This vaccine is intended to induce both, so that it can attack the virus when it is circulating in the body, as well as attack infected cells. We hope this means that the immune system will remember the virus, so that our vaccine will protect to people for an extended period of time. “
Despite the WHO’s findings and comment, AstraZeneca’s share prices fell 3.8% on Monday afternoon.
Public health officials say there is no return to “normal” until there is a vaccine. There are no FDA-approved drugs or vaccines for the coronavirus, which has infected more than 14 million people worldwide and has killed at least 606,922 as of Monday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Last week, a senior United Nations official warned of decades of tragedy if wealthy nations do not help poorer nations combat the coronavirus.
Ryan said Monday that there are 23 candidate vaccines in clinical development, and as of Monday, only one had produced phase one data available in a peer-reviewed journal.
Once one of the vaccines is proven to be effective, the next challenge will be ensuring that there are enough doses to distribute globally, he said. He noted “significant challenges and headwinds” to ensure that the vaccines are scaled up to be delivered to as many people as possible.
“That mechanism as it currently is will not be able to provide a vaccine for everyone on the planet,” he said. “We will have to prioritize who gets which vaccine at first depending on what vaccine is available and we will have to have some policies and priorities around how best to use those vaccines.”
He urged more countries to join the Covax initiative, a program aimed at ensuring that effective vaccines are distributed fairly across the world.
“Part of that depends on more countries joining that Covax initiative and the more countries joining that initiative and sharing the risk and benefits of that process, the more likely it is that vaccines will be available to more people across the globe. world”. world.”
.
