The head of emergencies of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Michael Ryan, explained that there are currently six vaccines against COVID-19 in phase III, although he also asked for caution in this regard, Cubadebate publishes.
According to a report by RT Noticias, during a press conference held this Thursday in Geneva (Switzerland), Ryan indicated that several countries are working ?a lot? to accelerate the development of vaccines against the new disease.
In this sense, he specified that there are “more than 140 vaccine candidates, 26 clinical trials and six phase III trials.”
According to the WHO representative, they now have to “closely monitor” the trials to verify the safety and efficacy of these vaccines at an advanced stage. If compliance with these criteria is demonstrated, the vaccine will begin to be produced so that it can be supplied to the population, he added.
?But we have to be extremely cautious about vaccinating [?] thousands of people?, Ryan said, arguing that possible adverse effects must be ruled out. “The challenge is to know if we have enough vaccines for all the inhabitants of the world?, he concluded.
In phase III trials, which evaluate the efficacy and safety of the vaccine, thousands of subjects from the ?target population? can participate and ?are carried out under field conditions similar to future routine use?, an article in the Journal of Postgraduate Medicine explains.
At the same press conference, the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated that there should be a ?global consensus? to make any coronavirus vaccine a global health product, highlighting that doing so is a political choice, since nationalism will not help fight the pandemic.
The WHO chief asserted that the search for the vaccine against the new coronavirus is “historic”, because it is developing at an unprecedented speed.
For his part, Tarik Yazarevich, spokesman for the agency, indicated that it will guarantee access to the COVID-19 vaccine for all countries through the COVAX mechanism. The goal is that “by the end of 2021, around 2 billion doses of the vaccine can be distributed fairly,” he said.