Positive results of several anti-coronavirus vaccine trials presented in recent days give hope that the pandemic will be defeated by the use of vaccines in combination with other public health measures, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2020) Positive results of several anti-coronavirus vaccine trials presented in recent days give hope that the pandemic will be defeated by the use of vaccines in combination with other public health measures, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.
"With the latest positive news from vaccine trials, the light at the end of this long, dark tunnel is growing brighter. There is now real hope that vaccines in combination with other tried and tested public health measures will help to end the pandemic ... The significance of this scientific achievement cannot be overstated. No vaccines in history have been developed as rapidly as these. The scientific community has set a new standard for vaccine development," Tedros said at a briefing.
The WHO chief noted that every government was trying to do its best to protect the population, however, now there is a real risk that the "poorest and most vulnerable people will be trampled in the stampede for vaccines."
Earlier in the day, UK pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford said that its candidate vaccine against COVID-19 had shown an average of 70 percent efficacy in trials, although one dosing regimen had shown to be 90 percent effective. AstraZeneca is the third Western vaccine manufacturer that has presented its phase 3 results, after Pfizer and Moderna, whose vaccines showed a 95 and 94.5 percent effectiveness rate, respectively.
In August, Russia became the first country to register a COVID-19 vaccine, which was named Sputnik V. The vaccine is currently going through phase 3 trials in Russia, as well as in Belarus, the United Arab Emirates, India and Brazil. Sputnik V is 92 percent effective, based on data from the first 16,000 volunteers who have received both shots of the two-dose vaccine.
