The search for a Covid-19 vaccine a global effort, says WHO


As scientists around the world search for a Covid-19 vaccine, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), is warning that the process of developing a vaccine is long, complex and expensive. Most vaccines, warns Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, fail in early development.
A global search
“The world needs multiple vaccine candidates of different types to maximize the chances of finding a winning solution. When a successful new vaccine is found there will be greater demand that there is supply,” says Ghebreyesus.
Speaking on Thursday during a WHO media briefing on Covid-19, Ghebreyesus said the are currently nine vaccines candidates going through trials. This portfolio is already the broadest in the world and is constantly expanding, he added.
“And through the COVAX global vaccines facility, countries that represent nearly 70% of the population have signed up or expressed an interest to be part of the new initiative,” he says.
A Russian vaccinerecent reports that Russian scientist have found a Covid-19 vaccine, WHO says that they are in contact with Russian authorities to gather more information on the product.
International links
The Covid-19 outbreak was first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and WHO declared the outbreak as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. The global outbreak has halted internationally linked sectors, says Ghebreyesus.
“We live in a globalized economy and countries are dependent on each other for goods and services, transportation and supply. If we do not get rid of the virus everywhere, we cannot rebuild economies anywhere. The sooner we stop the pandemic, the sooner we can ensure internationally inter-linked sectors like travel, trade and tourism can truly recover,” he says.
Ghebreyesus has warned the international community to be alert for future pandemics, and work together to quell them. –Health-e News
Author
Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
The search for a Covid-19 vaccine a global effort, says WHO
by NdivhuwoMukwevho, Health-e News
August 14, 2020
MOST READ
EDITOR'S PICKS
Related

Activists say energy department lacks political will to tackle climate change



Activists say energy department lacks political will to tackle climate change

