Coronavirus Vaccine Cannot Be Expected Before 2021, Says WHO Expert Amid High Hopes From Oxford Trial

The Head of WHO’s emergencies programme, Mike Ryan has said that while good progress is being made a vaccine for coronavirus will not be available until early 2021.

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New Delhi: Scientists across the world are racing to find a vaccine for Covid 19. Most people believe that it is the only way out of the pandemic. While there is some positive news about vaccine development with two countries leading the research, the head WHO’s emergencies programme Mike Ryan said during a social media event that a coronavirus vaccine cannot be expected before the first quarter next year. According to a report by Reuters, Ryan said while ‘good progress’ is being made the vaccine cannot be expected too soon. “We’re making good progress. Realistically vaccine no matter how fast we try to push we have to make sure that these vaccines are safe and that they are effective. And that takes its own time." He added," we are speeding it up as much as possible and we are not in any going to cut corners in safety. We can shorten the time but realistically it is going to be the first part of next year before we start seeing people getting vaccinated,” said Ryan during the event. He also emphasized the need for expanding production capacities to make the vaccine available for ‘everybody’ “And we need to be fair about this because this is a global good. Vaccines for this pandemic are not for the wealthy, they are not for the poor, they are for everybody,” he said during the event. His statements come after reports of Oxford University vaccine candidate reaching final or stage 3 trials. According to reports, the team at Oxford University has completed Phase I of the human trials, and the results have been published in the medical journal The Lancet. In the results published in The Lancet medical journal, it said that 'vaccine AZD1222 had a favorable response in the first phase of clinical trials. It did not prompt any serious side effects and elicited antibody and T-cell immune responses.' According to media reports, the varsity is hoping to make the vaccine available by the year-end, if the trials are successful.