The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that vaccines are no magic bullet for the coronavirus crisis, as Russia started vaccinating its high-risk workers and other countries geared up for similar programmes.
The coronavirus causes the Covid-19 respiratory disease.
The WHO warned about what it said is an erroneous belief that the Covid-19 crisis is over with jabs on the horizon, nearly a year after the start of the pandemic that has killed more than 1.5mn people worldwide.
“Vaccines do not equal zero Covid,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan stressed, adding that not everyone will be able to receive it early next year. “Vaccination will add a major, major, powerful tool to the tool kit that we have. But by themselves, they will not do the job.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also cautioned against the “growing perception that the pandemic is over” with the virus still spreading fast, putting enormous pressure on hospitals and healthcare workers.
The WHO says 51 candidate vaccines are currently being tested on humans, with 13 reaching final-stage mass testing.
More than 65mn people have contracted Covid-19 globally with the death toll from the disease topping 1.5mn since it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
Meanwhile, a top official with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) warned that poorer countries risk being overlooked during the roll-out of coronavirus vaccines.
“I’m very worried,” Frederik Kristensen, the deputy head of Oslo-based CEPI told AFP.
“If we have pictures going around the world now, of how everybody in the wealthy part of the world are getting vaccines, and nothing is happening in the (developing) part of the world, that is a big, big, big problem.”
Kristensen was speaking as major nations such as Britain, France and the US geared up for vaccination programmes in their countries.
The CEPI is a partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil organisations, launched in 2017 to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics in a way that is equitable.
It committed $1.1bn to finance the development of nine candidate coronavirus vaccines, including those of the US firm Moderna and the British company AstraZeneca.
Nearly 2bn vaccine doses have been promised through “Covax”, an international alliance led by the WHO, which is negotiating with laboratories for equitable access for the vaccine, Kristensen said.
But the figure is theoretical given the fact that vaccines still have to be approved and some may be rejected, he said.
As for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which are at the most advanced stage, they use technology that requires storage at -70° Celsius for the former and -20°C for the latter.
So the question is how to distribute them in poorer hot countries, Kristensen asked.
“We’ve been to places where the last mile of the transportation happens on the back of a motorbike,” he said.
German police intervened yesterday to break up a demonstration by opponents of coronavirus lockdown measures in the northern city of Bremen, after the protest was banned by the country’s highest court.
Germany’s constitutional court upheld earlier rulings by lower courts that had already denied permission for 20,000 demonstrators to convene in the city centre of Bremen.
However, hundreds of people still gathered, some of them opponents of the government’s coronavirus measures and others part of a counter-demonstration.
Last month, police unleashed water cannon and pepper spray in an effort to scatter thousands of protesters in Berlin angry about coronavirus restrictions.
Although most Germans accept the latest “lockdown light” to curb a second wave of the coronavirus, critics say the measures endanger citizens’ civil rights.
Yesterday Moscow began vaccinating workers at high risk of becoming infected with the coronavirus at newly-opened clinics across the city.
Health officials said they had opened 70 coronavirus vaccine centres in the Russian capital that would initially offer jabs for health, education and social workers.
“Citizens from the main risk groups who in connection with their professional activities come into contact with a large number of people can get vaccinated,” officials said.
Russia was one of the first countries to announce the development of a vaccine, Sputnik V – dubbed after the Soviet-era satellite – in August but before beginning final clinical trials.
It is currently in its third and final stage of clinical trials involving some 40,000 volunteers.
Sputnik V’s developers last month said interim results had shown the vaccine was 95% effective and would be cheaper and easier to store than some alternatives.
The vaccine will be free to all Russian citizens and inoculation will be voluntary.
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