World To Have A Covid-19 Vaccine by End 2020, Says WHO

The World is most likely to have a Covid-19 vaccine ready by the end of this year, the chief of the World Health Organization (WHO) said without any further details, reports Reuters.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General to the organization, said, ‘we will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we may have a vaccine. There is hope.’

He expressed the hope for a vaccine while addressing the end of a two-day meeting of its Executive Board on the pandemic on October 6.

Nine experimental vaccines are in the pipeline of the WHO-led COVAX global vaccine facility that aims to distribute two billion doses by the end of next year.

On the other hand, China, who claimed to have developed at least 4 corona vaccines, is in talks to have its vaccines assessed by the WHO in order to make them globally available for emergency use, an official of the organization said.

Socorro Escalate, the organization’s coordinator for essential medicines and health technologies in the Western Pacific region, told an online news conference that China had held preliminary discussions with WHO to have its vaccines included in a list for emergency use.

According to reports, the WHO’s emergency use listing procedure allows unlicensed vaccines and treatments to be assessed to expedite their availability in public health emergencies. This helps WHO member states and UN procurement agencies to determine the acceptability of the vaccines.

As per data from Johns Hopkins University, the novel coronavirus has infected over 35.2 million people with more than 1 million fatalities across the globe as of October 6.