Covid: WHO hopes hundreds of millions of vaccines before 2021

The World Health Organization hoped on Thursday that a few hundred million vaccines against Covid-19 could be produced before the end of the year, and even two billion in 2021. As the race for vaccines accelerates, WHO Scientific Director Soumya Swaminathan said more than 200 vaccine candidates are being studied around the world, and a dozen clinical trials underway.

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" If we are very lucky, there will be one or two candidates before the end of this year, " she said at a virtual press conference. The senior official of the WHO has identified three groups of people who should be given priority vaccination: front-line workers such as doctors and police, the most vulnerable such as the elderly, people living in a transmission environment high as urban slums and nursing homes.

" We are assuming that we could have a few hundred million doses by the end of this year, in a very optimistic way ," said Swaminathan, adding: " We hope that by 2021 we will have two billion doses of one, two or three effective vaccines ”.

At the end of May, pharmaceutical industry bosses also said they believed in a vaccine before 2021, but stressed that the challenges would be considerable because the world will need two doses of vaccine per person, that is to say 15 billion. Swaminathan said scientists are analyzing 40,000 genome sequences for the new coronavirus, which has killed more than 450,000 people worldwide, and said it has not mutated in key areas that would alter the severity of the disease.

Dexamethasone, a steroid, is at this stage the only drug that appears to improve survival in patients with Covid-19. Boasted by US President Donald Trump and the controversial French researcher Didier Raoult, hydroxychloroquine has not confirmed the hopes placed in him. WHO has abandoned trials of this treatment, concluding that this antimalarial does not reduce the mortality rate of hospitalized Covid-19 patients.

Swaminathan said trials that were not being conducted by WHO were continuing around the world to find out if hydroxychloroquine could have a preventive role against the virus. " Hydroxychloroquine has no impact - we are sure now - on the disease in terms of mortality in hospitalized Covid-19 patients ," she said, stressing that it was not known however, not yet if the treatment could have a preventive effect or reduce the severity of the infection if it is taken at the start of the infection.

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