Several coronavirus vaccines in phase-3 of clinical trials, no silver bullet: WHO
The World Health Organisation Director General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus has said that a number of anti-coronavirus vaccine candidates across the world are now in phase-3 of clinical trials and that he is hoping that we will soon have a number of effective vaccines the deadly novel coronavirus which has infected over 18 million people worldwide.
“A number of vaccines are now in phase-3 clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection. However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment & there might never be,” Dr Tedros said.
He further added that the number of coronavirus cases has increased 5 fold and the number of deaths has tripled in the last 3 months.
“Number of cases globally has increased more than 5-fold to 17.5 million & the number of deaths has more than tripled to 680,000 since WHO's emergency committee on COVID19 last met 3 months ago,” he added.
Media briefing on #COVID19 with @DrTedros https://t.co/BjKIz7lEmD
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) August 3, 2020
Initial trial results of several vaccine candidates have showed positive results. In UK, the COVID-19 vaccine jointly manufactured by Oxford University and AstraZeneca is in the final stages of clinical trials and could be available for the general public by late this year of early next year.
The Russians seem to be one step further ahead. Reports coming out of Russia suggest that the vaccine created at the Gamaleya institute in Moscow has completed human trials and could be registered as early as August 10-12.
In India, human trials of Bharat Biotech manufactured vaccine — COVAXIN — have begun and volunteers are now being administered the under trial vaccine.