23:01 6 October 2020
Covid-19 vaccine may be ready later this year: WHO
World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday hoping that a coronavirus vaccine would be ready by the end of the year. However, he did not reveal any details.
At the same time, Tedros called on heads of states to show solidarity over vaccine distribution. Currently, 168 countries participate in the COVAX project – launched by WHO to ensure rapid distribution and access to vaccines for all countries of the world - but not the USA, China and Russia. COVAX plans to distribute 2 billion doses of vaccines in 2021.
Among the nine candidate vaccines selected by COVAX, three are currently in the final, third phase of clinical trials. Research on one of them, developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, was suspended due to a serious illness of one of the participants. The second, owned by the American company Moderna, is not expected to be widely distributed until the end of the first quarter of next year.
Meanwhile, the European Medicines Agency announced on Tuesday that it has started real-time monitoring of data from research on the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, which is intended to accelerate the possible approval of the drug on the market.
(PAP) https://stooq.pl/n/?f=1378614&c=0&p=4
