WHO gives emergency authorization for Covid-19 vaccine

The WHO gave emergency use approval to AZ’s COVID-19 vaccines (AstraZeneca’s vaccine), in order to initiate the distribution to some of the poorest nations globally. 

According to a WHO statement, “We have listed a couple of versions of the AZ-Oxford Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, giving the green signal for these COVID-19 vaccines to be rolled out at the global level through Covax.” 

These couple of approved versions are being developed by the Serum Institute of India (SII), and in South Korea.

According to Dr Mariangela Simao, the WHO assistant-director general for access to drugs, “Nations with no access to COVID-19 vaccines to date will finally can start vaccinating their health workers as well as populations at risk, contributing to the Covax facility’s target of equitable vaccine distribution,” 

“But we must tackle the pressure in order to meet the requirement of priority populations everywhere and facilitate global access. In order to do that, we need a couple of things: one the scale-up of manufacturing capacity, and second, developers’ early submission of their vaccines for WHO review,” he also added. 

This approval also enables or allows nations in order to expedite their own regulatory approval to import as well as administration of the COVID-19 vaccines.

So far, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is the only other vaccine to have been given the green light by the World Health Organization. The AZ vaccines (AstraZeneca) from India and South Korea developed approximately entire doses of vaccine in the Covax facility’s initial step of the distribution.

On 3’rd February, the issued distribution list broke down the programme’s initial 337.2 million doses. The initial expected deliveries are scheduled in the late February. Estimated 145 participating economies are planned to receive enough vaccine doses in order to immunise 3.3 % of their collective population by mid-2021.

The list of distribution includes 240 million AstraZeneca doses produced by the Serum Institute of India; 96 million AstraZeneca doses being produced in South Korea; and 1.2 million Pfizer doses. Both the COVID-19 vaccines require a couple of injected doses.

Reference link:

https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-health-philippines-coronavirus-pandemic-games-bd67d2d9538b8d5b601f7bfc336c9cc9

https://www.who.int/news/item/15-02-2021-who-lists-two-additional-covid-19-vaccines-for-emergency-use-and-covax-roll-out
Related:

COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca is now authorized across the EU