Covid vaccine likely to be ready by end 2020, says WHO

A ‘safe and effective’ vaccine against novel the coronavirus disease may be ready by the end of 2020, said the World Health Organization (WHO) .

“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.

He also called for unity by all leaders to ensure that the vaccines are distributed equally when they become available. “We need each other, we need solidarity and we need to use all the energy we have to fight the virus,” he said.

Nine experimental vaccines are being developed. The COVAX facility, led by the WHO and the public-private partnership GAVI vaccine alliance, gives access to COVID-19 vaccine candidates in development. Countries that sign on to COVAX will get access to a broad portfolio of new vaccine candidates to fight. So far some 168 countries have joined the COVAX facility. China, the United States nor Russia are not among them.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday told coronavirus vaccine developers that it would need at least two months of safety data after a full vaccination regime to review applications for emergency use authorisation of an experimental vaccine.

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