COVID-19 vaccine may be out by the end of 2020: WHO

Geneva: Raising hope among billions, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the vaccine for COVID 19 may be ready by the end of this year. But he refrained from sharing more details about the same.

"We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we may have a vaccine. There is hope," Tedros said in his final remarks at the Executive Board meeting of WHO.

To ensure equal distribution of COVID 19 vaccines as and when available, the WHO Chief called for political commitment and solidarity of all the leaders.

According to reports WHO's COVAX global vaccine facility has a total of nine experimental vaccines in different stages of clinical testing. The facility aims to distribute around two million doses by the end of next year. The COVAX initiative of WHO is joined by 172 countries. However, to secure their own vaccines, few countries like the US, Russia, and China declined to join COVAX.

The meeting which was held for two days analyzed the global response of various countries regarding the pandemic. A few calls from countries like Britain, Germany, and Australia called to make reforms to strengthen the UN agency.

Around 1,045,097 people have lost their lives to COVID-19 worldwide. A total of 35,537,050 cases have been registered. There have been various vaccine candidates against COVID-19, but most of them are not ready yet and a couple of them which are ready are yet to be accepted for global use.

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