A World Health Organization (WHO) expert on Wednesday said, “Researchers are making good progress in developing vaccines against COVID-19, with a handful in late-stage trials, but their first use cannot be expected until early 2021”.
Head of WHO’s emergencies programme, Mike Ryan said, “WHO is working to ensure fair vaccine distribution, but in the meantime it is key to suppress the virus’s spread”. He commented, “We’re making good progress” and added that several vaccines were now in phase 3 trials and none had failed, so far, in terms of safety or ability to generate an immune response.
He said, “Realistically it is going to be the first part of next year before we start seeing people getting vaccinated. And we need to be fair about this, because this is a global good. Vaccines for this pandemic are not for the wealthy, they are not for the poor, they are for everybody”.
The companies working on creating vaccines said, “The U.S. government will pay $1.95 billion to buy 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer Inc and German biotech BioNTech if it proves safe and effective”.
Raising concern over the disrupted education of children Ryan said, “We have to do everything possible to bring our children back to school, and the most effective thing we can do is to stop the disease in our community”. “Because if you control the disease in the community, you can open the schools”, he added.
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