WHO Expects COVID Vaccination by 2021
The World Health Organisation has said the large scale vaccinations of people will not happen this year.
There is a race to produce a novel coronavirus vaccine by the end of this year. The World Health Organisation Spokeswoman Margaret Harris told journalists at a briefing in Geneva on 4th September said the large scale vaccinations of people will not happen this year. The WHO said that the majority of people will be vaccinated by mid 2021. WHO said that Phase 3 of the vaccine trials will take longer because researchers need to work hard to test the effectiveness of the vaccine and make sure they are safe. The United States announced that it was thinking of increasing the speed of trials for the COVID vaccine. WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told a news conference, “Every country had the right to approve drugs without completing full trials. But it is not something that you do very lightly. Countries need to be very careful before authorizing any vaccine.” Russia has already granted regulatory approval to a Covid-19 vaccine ; Sputnik-5 this month. They did less than two months of human testing.
Mike Ryan, the head of the emergencies programme at WHO said, “If vaccines are quickly made without full trials, when they are given to the public, scientists need to do intensive monitoring and safety follow-up. It should also be halted immediately if problems occur. If you move too quickly to vaccinate millions of people, you may miss some major side-effects.”
