Geneva (UNA-OIC) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has welcomed the successful results of the coronavirus vaccine developed by the British University of Oxford, one of the leading vaccine development efforts in the world.
The UN health agency noted that results of the trials involving 1,077 people, all of whom were healthy adults aged between 18 and 55, showed that across the group, 100 percent of the participants had demonstrated neutralizing antibody responses by the end of the course, which include a booster dose.
WHO called on nations to join the COVAX Facility, and the Advance Market Commitment (AMC) within it, which is designed to guarantee rapid, fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for every country in the world, rich and poor, to make rapid progress towards slowing the pandemic.
Speaking during a press conference here on Monday, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that political leaders around the world should try to make the coronavirus vaccines available to everyone “for the public good”, asserting the importance of ensuring equal access for all.
“For the fair distribution and specially access to the poor and those who cannot afford, the most important element will be political commitment, especially by our leaders. And with political commitment, of course, that’s the only way you can get fair distribution,” he said.
In addition to the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, another vaccine is being developed separately by CanSino Biologics Inc. and China’s military research unit, which also showed promising signs to prevent COVID-19.
WHO Health Emergencies Program Director Dr. Michael Ryan said that the two new studies that offered new hope of a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus on Monday are a “positive result” but warned that “there is a long way to go”.
“We now need to move into larger-scale real-world trials. But it is good to see more data and more products moving into this very important phase of vaccine discovery,” he said, referring to the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University, where scientists claimed their experimental vaccine had exhibited a protective immune response in hundreds of people who received the vaccine.
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