Astrazeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate is probably the world’s leading candidate and most advanced in terms of development, the World Health Organization’s chief scientis Soumya Swaminathan has said.
Speaking to a news briefing yesterday, called for considering collaborating on COVID-19 vaccine trials, Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate was also “not far behind” Astrazeneca’s, among more than 200 candidates.
The WHO is in talks with multiple Chinese manufacturers, including Sinovac, on potential vaccines, she said.
AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by researchers from the Oxford University will likely provide protection against the disease for one year, the British drug maker’s CEO told Belgian radio station Bel RTL this month.
The Oxford University last month announced the start of a Phase II/III UK trial of the vaccine, named AZD1222 (formerly known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19), in about 10,000 adult volunteers. Other late-stage trials are due to begin in a number of countries.
Scientists predict that the world may have a Covid-19 vaccine within one year or even a few months earlier, said the Director-General of the World Health Organization even as he underlined the importance of global cooperation to develop, manufacture and distribute the vaccines.
However, making the vaccine available and distributing it to all will be a challenge and will require political will, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday during a meeting with the European Parliament’s Committee for Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.
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ACT-Accelerator
Meanwhile, a WHO-led coalition fighting the pandemic on Friday asked government and private sector donors to help raise $31.3 billion in the next 12 months to develop and deliver tests, treatments and vaccines for the disease. The initiative is called the ACT-Accelerator.
Andrew Witty, Special Envoy for the ACT-Accelerator, said it was important to consider a “portfolio of research efforts” for vaccines.
“It’s still very early days in this journey, we may be super lucky – which would be terrific – and have an early win,” Witty said.
Access to covid-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-Accelerator) on Friday published its consolidated investment case, alongside the costed plans of the member organizations.
The Access to covid-19 Tools ACT-Accelerator, is a new, groundbreaking global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to covid-19 diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines.
It was set up in response to a call from G20 leaders in March and launched by the WHO, EC, France and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in April 2020.
The ACT-Accelerator has four areas of work: diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines and the health system connector. Cross-cutting all of these is the workstream on access and allocation.