SWITZERLAND: As the world celebrates advances in vaccines against the COVID-19 novel coronavirus, a top WHO expert warned in an interview with AFP that public distrust risked rendering even the most effective treatments useless against the pandemic.
“A vaccine that sits in a freezer or in a refrigerator or on a shelf and doesn’t get used is doing nothing to help shorten this pandemic,” said Director of the World Health Organization’s Immunisation Department Kate O’Brien.
US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced Monday that their prospective vaccine had proven 90 percent effective in preventing Covid-19 infections in ongoing final phase trials involving more than 40,000 people.
O’Brien hailed the interim results as “extremely important”, and voiced hope that preliminary data from a handful of other candidate vaccines in similarly advanced trials would come through soon.
But with the pandemic continuing to surge after already claiming some 1.3 million lives, she voiced deep concern at growing signs of vaccine hesitancy, with misinformation and mistrust colouring people’s acceptance of scientific advances.
But even with gargantuan efforts, it will take a while before there are enough doses for everyone, and the WHO has set out guidelines for how to prioritise the distribution.
“The goal here is that every country should be able to immunise 20 percent of their population by the end of 2021,” O’Brien said.
- AFP
