Frontline and vulnerable professionals may have priority
The World Health Organization (WHO) expects hundreds of millions of doses of a vaccine against Covid-19 to be produced this year and two billion doses by the end of 2021, said chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan, on Thursday (18).
The WHO is working on plans to help decide who should receive the first doses once a vaccine is approved, she said.
Priority would be given to frontline professionals, such as doctors, people who are vulnerable due to age or other illnesses, and to those who work or live in high-transmission locations, such as prisons and nursing homes.
“I am hopeful, I am optimistic. But vaccine development is a complex undertaking, it involves a lot of uncertainty ”, he said. “The good thing is that we have a lot of vaccines and platforms, so if the first fails or the second fails, we shouldn’t lose hope, we shouldn’t give up.”
About 10 potential vaccines are being tested on humans in the hope that one will become available in the coming months to prevent infection. Countries have already started to make agreements with pharmaceutical companies to order doses even before a vaccine is proven to work.
Swaminathan described the desire for millions of doses of a vaccine later this year as optimistic, adding that the hope of up to two billion doses of up to three different vaccines next year is a “big if”.
The scientist said the genetic analysis data collected so far showed that the new coronavirus has not yet undergone any mutations that would alter the severity of the disease it causes.
