Companies researching coronavirus vaccines are in a race against time, not one another, to immunize as many people as possible in the shortest possible time, the head of the Italian pharmaceutical association Farmindustria said Wednesday
ROME (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th July, 2020) Companies researching coronavirus vaccines are in a race against time, not one another, to immunize as many people as possible in the shortest possible time, the head of the Italian pharmaceutical association Farmindustria said Wednesday.
"If we have several vaccines we will be able to immunize the majority of the world's population," Massimo Scaccabarozzi told Italy's Radio Cusano Campus.
The president of the Italian biopharma firm Advent IRBM said Monday that an experimental vaccine being developed in collaboration with UK drugmaker AstraZeneca was expected to hit the market by January. The same deadline is set for a Russian vaccine candidate by the state virology and biotech research center Vector.
"The important thing is not who will be first. The important thing is that it happens soon. There have been giant steps forward," Scaccabarozzi said.
The World Health Organization is keeping tabs on more than 160 projects to find a vaccine against COVID-19. Of them, 25 are in various stages of clinical trials. The UN agency estimates that the virus has infected more than 16.3 million people and killed over 650,000.
