There’s hope! Corona vaccine may be ready by year-end, says WHO chief

A vaccine against Covid-19 may be ready by year-end, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

 “We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we may have a vaccine. There is hope,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, calling called for solidarity and political commitment by all leaders to ensure equal distribution of vaccines when they become available.

 The EU health regulator has launched a real-time review of a Covid-19 vaccine developed by US drugmaker Pfizer PFE.N and Germany’s BioNTech 22UAy.F, it said on Tuesday, following a similar announcement for rival AstraZeneca’s AZN.L jab last week. 

The announcement by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) could speed up the process of approving a successful vaccine in the bloc. Nine experimental vaccines are in the pipeline of the WHO-led COVAX global vaccine facility that aims to distribute 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.

 So far some 168 countries have joined the COVAX facility, but not China, the US and Russia. The Trump administration has said it is relying instead on bilateral deals to secure supplies from vaccine makers. 

“Especially for the vaccines and other products which are in the pipeline, the most important tool is political commitment from our leaders especially in the equitable distribution of the vaccines,” the WHO chief said.

 “We need each other, we need solidarity and we need to use all the energy we have to fight the virus,” he said. 

With IANS inputs