The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Tuesday said a vaccine against COVID-19 may be ready by year-end, reported NDTV.
“We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we may have a vaccine,” Tedros said while addressing the end of a two-day meeting of WHO’s Executive Board on the pandemic. “There is hope.”
The WHO head also called for solidarity and political commitment by all global leaders to ensure equal distribution of vaccines 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.
The WHO-led COVAX global vaccine facility has nine experimental vaccines in the pipeline. The COVAX facility aims to distribute 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.
The COVAX facility 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 combat COVID-19. Around 168 countries have joined the COVAX facility so far, but neither China, the United States nor Russia are among them.
“Especially for the vaccines and other products which are in the pipeline, the most important tool is political commitment from our leaders especially in the equitable distribution of the vaccines,” Tedros said.
On Monday, Dr. Michael Ryan, the head of emergency operations at WHO, said new estimates indicate that roughly one in ten people globally may have been infected with Covid-19.
Ryan said that the figures vary from urban to rural, and between different groups, but “the vast majority of the world remains at risk”.
India is currently the country registering the highest number of daily coronavirus cases globally. The country’s coronavirus count rose to 66,85,083 with 61,267 new cases on Tuesday. The death toll increased by 884 to 1,03,569.
