Tag Archives: WHO

Latin American nations seek more time to join WHO vaccine plan

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Several Latin American countries have informed the World Health Organization (WHO) they intend to request more time to sign up for its global COVID-19 vaccine allocation plan known as COVAX, an official at the WHO’s regional branch said on Thursday.

Countries have until midnight on Friday to formalize legally binding commitments to COVAX, a mechanism for pooled procurement and equitable distribution of eventual vaccines.

A representative for the GAVI Alliance, the COVAX secretariat, said by email that details of which nations have joined COVAX will only be made public after the deadline.

Health officials in Mexico, which has the worst outbreak in Latin America after Brazil, said their country would sign the commitment on time. Brazil, which has the world’s most severe outbreak outside the United States and India, was still studying what to do, a ministry spokesperson said.

More than 170 countries have joined the global vaccine plan to help buy and distribute immunization shots for COVID-19 fairly around the world, WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday.

Jarbas Barbosa, assistant director of the Pan-American Health Organization, said in a briefing on Wednesday that Latin American countries were having trouble meeting the deadline and some wanted to push back the date.

Barbosa said all countries in the Americas except the United States had expressed interest in the vaccine facility, even those that have separate agreements with vaccine makers, because it gives them an added guarantee of access to doses.

Ten Latin American countries are among 90 poor nations in the world that will not have to pay for the vaccine, while the others in the region will pay an “accessible” price through COVAX, Barbosa said.

Colombian President Ivan Duque confirmed on Wednesday that his government was joining COVAX and Paraguay’s health ministry said it has already signed, even as it plans to buy the vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca PLC and Oxford University.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Diego Ore in Mexico City, Julia Cobb in Bogotá, Daniela Desantis in Asunción; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Chizu Nomiyama)

Global coronavirus cases surpass 30 million: Reuters tally

By Jane Wardell

(Reuters) – Global coronavirus cases exceeded 30 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, with the pandemic showing no signs of slowing.

India was firmly in focus as the latest epicenter, although North and South America combined still accounted for almost half of the global cases.

Global new daily case numbers reached record levels in recent days and deaths neared 1 million as the international race to develop and market a vaccine heated up.

The official number of global coronavirus cases is now more than five times the number of severe influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to World Health Organization data.

Around the world, there have been almost 1 million deaths, considered a lagging indicator given the two-week incubation period of the virus. That has well exceeded the upper range of 290,000 to 650,000 annual deaths linked to influenza.

India this week became only the second country in the world, after the United States, to record more than 5 million cases. On Thursday, it reported another record daily rise in cases of almost 98,000.

The south Asian nation, the world’s second most populous country, has been reporting more new daily cases than the United States since mid-August and accounts for just over 16% of global known cases.

Reported deaths in India have been relatively low so far but are showing an uptick, and the country has recorded more than 1,000 deaths every day for the last two weeks.

The United States has about 20% of all global cases, although it has just 4% of the world’s population. Brazil, the third worst-hit country, accounts for roughly 15% of global cases.

It took 18 days for global cases to surge from 25 million to more than 30 million. It took 20 days for the world to go from 20 million to 25 million and 19 days to go from 15 million to 20 million.

The global rate of new daily cases is slowing, reflecting progress in constraining the disease in many countries, despite a few big surges.

Australia on Thursday reported its lowest single-day case rise since June as strict lockdown measures in its second largest city of Melbourne, the center of the country’s second wave, appeared to pay off.

Health experts stress that official data almost certainly under-reports both infections and deaths, particularly in countries with limited testing capacity.

The race to develop and bring to market a novel coronavirus vaccine has grown increasingly frenetic in recent weeks with about 200 candidates in development globally.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said his country could have a vaccine ready for distribution before the U.S. election on Nov. 3, while a Chinese health official this week said China may have a vaccine ready for public use as early as November.

While the trajectory of the coronavirus still falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10% of them, experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.

(Reporting by Jane Wardell; editing by Robert Birsel and Lisa Shumaker)

Exclusive: AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial in U.S. on hold until at least midweek – sources

By Julie Steenhuysen and Marisa Taylor

CHICAGO (Reuters) – AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine trial remains on hold in the United States pending a U.S. investigation into a serious side effect in Britain even as other trials of the vaccine resume, sources familiar with the details told Reuters.

AstraZeneca on Saturday said it had restarted its trial in Britain after regulators completed their review of a serious side effect in one trial participant there.

This was the first indication that the U.S. trial will remain on hold until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a safety panel investigate the case.

Enrollment in the company’s global trials of the vaccine, which it is developing with researchers at Oxford University, was put on pause on Sept. 6.

Sources told Reuters that enrollment of new patients and other trial procedures for the pivotal U.S. trial were being rescheduled until at least midweek and that it was not clear how long it would take for the FDA to complete its probe.

Governments around the world are desperate for a vaccine to help end the pandemic, which has caused more than 900,000 deaths and global economic turmoil. The World Health Organization (WHO) had flagged AstraZeneca’s as the most promising. A prolonged delay in the U.S. trial could slow access to the vaccine in the United States.

The British adverse event involved a study patient thought to be suffering a rare spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis.

An AstraZeneca spokeswoman declined to comment on when the U.S. trial would resume. She said in an email the company “will continue to work with health authorities across the world, including the FDA, and be guided as to when other clinical trials can resume.”

The status of the South African and Indian trials remains unknown, but the trial in Brazil has also restarted. The company has not commented on timing of resumption in other parts of the world besides Britain.

FDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen and Marisa Taylor; Editing by Peter Henderson and Cynthia Osterman)

Pandemic preparedness panel slams collective failure to heed warnings

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – A collective failure by political leaders to heed warnings and prepare for an infectious disease pandemic has transformed “a world at risk” to a “world in disorder,” according to a report on international epidemic preparedness.

“Financial and political investments in preparedness have been insufficient, and we are all paying the price,” said the report by The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB).

“It is not as if the world has lacked the opportunity to take these steps,” it said. “There have been numerous calls for action … yet none has generated the changes needed.”

The GPMB, co-convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), is co-chaired by former WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The board’s 2019 report, released a few months before the novel coronavirus emerged in China, said there was a real threat of “a rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen” and warned such an event could kill millions and wreak havoc on the global economy.

This year’s report – entitled “A World in Disorder” – said world leaders had never before “been so clearly forewarned of the dangers of a devastating pandemic”, and yet they had failed to take adequate action.

“Tragically and catastrophically, we have seen our worst fears realized,” Brundtland told a media briefing on Monday. “The impact of COVID-19 is even worse than we anticipated.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed “a collective failure to take pandemic prevention, preparedness and response seriously and prioritize it accordingly,” the report said.

“Pathogens thrive in disruption and disorder. COVID-19 has proven the point.”

The report noted that despite calling a year ago for heads of government to commit and invest in pandemic preparedness, for health systems to be strengthened and for financial risk planning to take seriously the threat of a devastating pandemic, little progress had been made on any of these.

A lack of leadership, it said, was exacerbating the current pandemic. “Failure to learn the lessons of COVID-19 or to act on them with the necessary resources and commitment will mean that the next pandemic, which is sure to come, will be even more damaging,” it said.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity and a member of the monitoring board, urged leaders not to repeat the same mistakes. “This needs more than warm words of solidarity,” he said. “This needs a moment of visionary, historic, political and financial leadership.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, Editing by William Maclean and Alex Richardson)

U.N.’s Guterres calls for $35 billion more for WHO COVID-19 program

ZURICH (Reuters) – United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for $35 billion more, including $15 billion in the next three months, for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) “ACT Accelerator” program to back vaccines, treatments and diagnostics against COVID-19.

Some $3 billion has been contributed so far, Guterres told an online event on Thursday, calling it “seed funding” that was less than 10% of what the WHO wants for the program, formally called Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.

Financial support has, so far, lagged goals, as nations or governments including the European Union, Britain, Japan and the United States reach bilateral deals for vaccines, prompting Guterres and WHO General Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to plead to nations to contribute.

“We now need $35 billion more to go from ‘start up’ to ‘scale up and impact’,” Guterres said in online remarks at a meeting of a council formed to help the ACT Accelerator gain traction. “There is real urgency in these numbers. Without an infusion of $15 billion over the next three months, beginning immediately, we will lose the window of opportunity.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged backing, having in August already promised 400 million euros ($474 million) to the COVAX vaccine portion of the program.

“It is difficult to find a more compelling investment case. The European Commission will remain deeply and entirely committed to the success of the ACT Accelerator,” von der Leyen said. “The world needs it, we all need it.”

Tedros renewed calls for scaling up COVID-19 clinical trials. AstraZeneca this week suspended late-stage trials on its potential vaccine after an illness in a participant in Britain. Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said on Thursday if safety reviewers allow a restart, the company should still know by year’s end if its vaccine works.

(Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Michael Shields)

AstraZeneca expects COVID vaccine result by year-end if trials resume

By John Miller and Ludwig Burger

ZURICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – AstraZeneca should still know by year-end whether its experimental vaccine protects people against coronavirus, as long as it is cleared to resume trials soon, its chief executive said on Thursday amid doubts over its rollout.

Governments desperate to put an end to the COVID-19 pandemic which has caused more than 900,000 deaths and huge economic and social disruption during 2020 are pinning their hopes on a vaccine.

However British drugmaker AstraZeneca suspended late-stage trials on its potential vaccine this week after an illness in a participant in Britain who was reported to be suffering from symptoms associated with transverse myelitis, a rare spinal inflammatory disorder.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has flagged the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being developed with the University of Oxford, as the most promising for coronavirus.

CEO Pascal Soriot said during an online event on Thursday that AstraZeneca did not yet know the diagnosis of the participant who was ill, adding that it was not clear if the volunteer had transverse myelitis and more tests were needed.

The diagnosis would be submitted to an independent safety committee and this would usually then say whether trials can be resumed, Soriot said, adding it was usual for such pauses.

“It’s very common, actually, and many experts will tell you this,” Soriot said, adding: “The difference with other vaccine trials is, the whole world is not watching them, of course. They stop, they study, and they restart.”

Shares in AstraZeneca fell on Wednesday after the trial halt raised doubts about the timeline for the vaccine’s rollout.

AstraZeneca would supply vaccines to countries at the same time to ensure a fair and equitable distribution, Soriot said, reiterating that the company was close to having capacity to produce 3 billion doses at sites set up around the world to prevent governments from restricting distribution.

With up to 60,000 people set to participate in the study program, AstraZeneca’s CEO said the volume was typical of vaccine trials and large enough to spot rare side effects.

“With this you are going to pick up very rare events.” he said, adding that a planned staggered launch, prioritizing at-risk groups, would provide further assurance for the masses that are set to be covered by government plans at a later stage.

Serum Institute of India, one of AstraZeneca’s development and production partners, said on Thursday it was joining the suspension, backtracking on remarks that it did not face any issues.

‘DIFFICULT TO BE SURE’

Transverse myelitis cases after a vaccination have been documented before, but concrete links between the condition and vaccinations have not been established, experts said.

The U.S.-based Mayo Clinic concludes that the association so far is not strong enough to warrant limiting any vaccine.

A 2009 review in the journal Lupus of nearly 40 years of English-language publications found 37 cases of transverse myelitis associated with hepatitis B vaccines, measles-mumps-rubella, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and others.

The vaccines remained on the market, Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said.

Linking such an autoimmune response to a single factor like a vaccine is problematic, he said, given the number of immunological, hormonal or environmental factors at play.

“It’s terribly difficult to be sure,” Evans said.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Bryan Abrahams cautioned the trial participant’s condition must be thoroughly investigated.

“Even a single case could possibly imply a rate or association higher in the study than what is normally observed sporadically” he wrote to investors, adding a one in 10,000 risk, if confirmed, would likely be unacceptable.

BioNTech, among the frontrunners in the vaccine race with partner Pfizer, echoed remarks by Soriot that clinical halts are a common feature of immunization trials.

“Safety is a top priority,” its CEO Ugur Sahin told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Weiss and Josephine Mason; Editing by Alexander Smith)

AstraZeneca pauses coronavirus vaccine trial

LONDON (Reuters) – AstraZeneca has suspended global trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine after an unexplained illness in a participant, knocking the British drugmaker’s shares on Wednesday as prospects for an early rollout dimmed.

The vaccine to combat COVID-19, which AstraZeneca is developing with the University of Oxford, has been described by the World Health Organization as probably the world’s leading candidate and the furthest developed.

However, AstraZeneca said on Tuesday it had paused trials, including late-stage ones, to allow an independent committee to review safety data, and it was working to minimize any potential impact on the timeline.

“It is obviously a challenge to this particular vaccine trial,” Britain’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News.

The stakes are high because AstraZeneca, Britain’s largest drugmaker by market value, has already agreed to supply close to three billion doses to governments across the globe.

This is more than any other vaccine project, but asked whether the pause would set back the development process, Britain’s Hancock said: “Not necessarily, it depends on what they find when they do the investigation”.

Most states will contribute financially to developing the vaccine, even if the trial fails.

‘ROUTINE ACTION’

Britain’s medical regulator said it is urgently reviewing information available to determine whether trials can restart as quickly as possible.

A New York Times report citing a person familiar with the situation said a participant based in Britain was found to have transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections.

Whether this was directly linked to AstraZeneca’s vaccine remains unclear, it said. AstraZeneca declined to comment.

A person familiar with the situation told Reuters the illness occurred in the British trial which began in May with more than 12,000 participants, from 5 years old to beyond 70.

The U.S. trial, with a targeted 30,000 participants, was launched last week for the vaccine AZD1222, which is also in late-stage clinical trials in Brazil and South Africa.

Additional trials are planned in Japan and Russia, with a targeted 50,000 participants globally.

South Korea said it would look into the suspension and review its plan to participate in manufacturing the vaccine and health ministry official Yoon Tae-ho added such suspensions of clinical trials were not rare “as various factors interact”.

This was echoed by Germany’s Leukocare, which is working on a vaccine similar to AstraZeneca’s but is at an earlier stage.

“When you are inoculating 20,000 people, it is a foregone conclusion that at some point you will have severe adverse events. As soon as a link to the vaccine can clearly be ruled out, the trial continues,” CEO Michael Scholl said.

Immune related conditions such as inflammations, however, would be subject to particular scrutiny, he added.

The Oxford vaccine is designed to instruct human cells to make distinguishing parts of the coronavirus. That allows the immune system to build an arsenal against future infections.

A harmless virus known as adenovirus is used to bring the genetic instruction into the body, an approach which is also being pursued by China’s CanSino, Russia’s Gamaleya institute or Johnson & Johnson.

Backers of the Gamaleya candidate, the first Russian COVID-19 vaccine, underscored the difference between their jab, based on a adenovirus in humans, and the British contender with an adenovirus found in monkeys.

“We have consistently drawn attention to human adenoviral platform being much safer and much more studied than any other new platform,” the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund Kirill Dmitriev told Reuters.

In choosing a monkey virus, AstraZeneca, as well as Leukocare, are trying to avoid the risk of the immune system attacking the vector, due to a previous bout with an adenovirus.

The decision to put the trial on hold has impacted clinical trials being conducted by other vaccine makers, which are looking for signs of similar reactions, Stat said.

Serum Institute of India said its trials of AstraZeneca’s vaccine were ongoing and had not faced any issues.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health, which is providing funding for AstraZeneca’s trial, declined to comment.

Moderna said in an emailed statement it was “not aware of any impact” to its ongoing COVID-19 vaccine study.

Leading U.S. and European vaccine developers pledged on Tuesday to uphold scientific safety and efficacy standards for their experimental vaccines.

Nine companies, including AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer, issued an “historic pledge” after concerns that safety standards might slip under political pressure to rush out a vaccine.

The other signatories were Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co, GlaxoSmithKline, Novavax Inc, Sanofi and BioNTech.

(Reporting by Guy Fauconbridge, Estelle Shirbon, Kate Kelland in London, Deena Beasley; Additional reporting by Peter Henderson in San Francisco, Rocky Swift in Tokyo, Sangmi Cha in Seoul and Miyoung Kim in Singapore; Editing by Alexander Smith)

COVID-19 cases rise in U.S. Midwest and Northeast, deaths fall for third week

(Reuters) – Several states in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast have seen new COVID-19 cases increase for two weeks in a row, though nationally both new infections and deaths last week remained on a downward trend, a Reuters analysis showed.

The United States reported more than 287,000 new cases in the week ended Sept. 6, down 1.4% from the previous week and marking the seventh straight week of declines. More than 5,800 people died from COVID-19 last week, the third week in a row that the death rate has fallen.

Nevertheless, 17 states have seen cases rise for at least two weeks, according to the Reuters tally of state and county reports. They include Missouri, North Dakota and Wisconsin, where between 10% and 18% of people tested had the new coronavirus.

In the Northeast, Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York also reported increases in new cases for at least two weeks, though the positive test rate ranged from a low of 0.9% in New York to a high of 4.3% in Delaware — below the 5% level the World Health Organization considers concerning.

In some states, testing has increased as schools reopened. New York City, for instance, is testing 10% to 20% of students and staff every month. The University of Illinois is testing students twice a week.

Nationally, the share of all tests that came back positive for COVID-19 fell for a fifth week to 5.5%, well below a peak of nearly 9% in mid-July, according to data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.

The United States tested on average 741,000 people a day last week, up 5% from the prior week, but down from a peak in late July of over 800,000 people a day.

(Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Graphic by Chris Canipe; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

U.S., European COVID vaccine developers pledge to uphold testing rigor

By Ludwig Burger, Patricia Weiss and Caroline Copley

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Nine leading U.S. and European vaccine developers pledged on Tuesday to uphold the scientific standards their experimental immunizations will be held against in the global race to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

The companies, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, issued what they called a “historic pledge” after a rise in concern that safety and efficacy standards might slip in the rush to find a vaccine.

The companies said in a statement they would “uphold the integrity of the scientific process as they work towards potential global regulatory filings and approvals of the first COVID-19 vaccines”.

The other signatories were Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Moderna, Novavax, Sanofi and BioNTech.

The promise to play by established rules underlines a highly politicized debate over what action is needed to rein in COVID-19 quickly and to jump start global business and trade.

The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said last month COVID-19 vaccines may not necessarily need to complete Phase Three clinical trials – large-scale testing intended to demonstrate safety and efficacy – as long as officials are convinced the benefits outweigh the risks.

This prompted a call for caution from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Developers globally have yet to produce large-scale trial data showing actual infections in participants, yet Russia granted approval to a COVID-19 vaccine last month, prompting some Western experts to criticize a lack of testing.

The head of China’s Sinovac Biotech has said most of its employees and their families have already taken an experimental vaccine developed by the Chinese firm under the country’s emergency-use program.

Chinese companies or institutions, which are involved in several leading vaccine projects, did not sign the statement.

PROMISE ON SAFETY AND EFFICACY

“We want it to be known that also in the current situation we are not willing to compromise safety and efficacy,” said co-signatory Ugur Sahin, chief executive of Pfizer’s German partner BioNTech.

“Apart from the pressure and the hope for a vaccine to be available as fast as possible, there is also a lot of uncertainty among people that some development steps may be omitted here.”

BioNTech and Pfizer could unveil pivotal trial data as early as October, potentially placing them at the center of bitter U.S. politics before the Nov. 3 presidential election.

President Donald Trump has said it is possible the United States will have a vaccine before the election. His Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, has said she would not take his word alone on any potential coronavirus vaccine.

The nine companies said they would follow established guidance from expert regulatory authorities such as the FDA.

Among other hurdles, approval must be based on large, diverse clinical trials with comparative groups that do not receive the vaccine in question. Participants and those working on the trial must not know which group they belong to, according to the pledge.

BioNTech’s Sahin said there must be statistical certainty of 95%, in some cases higher, and that a positive reading on efficacy does not come just from random variations but reflects the underlying workings of the compound.

The development race has intensified safety concerns about an inoculation, polls have shown.

Western regulators have said they would not cut corners but rather prioritize the review workload and allow for development steps in parallel that would normally be handled consecutively.

Sahin declined to comment on regulators specifically or on what events prompted the joint statement.

The chief executive of German vaccine developer Leukocare, which did not sign the pledge, was more forthright.

“What Russia did – and maybe also there are tendencies in the U.S. to push the approval of a vaccine which has not been sufficiently developed in clinic – bears a huge risk,” said CEO Michael Scholl.

“My biggest fear is that we will approve vaccines that are not safe and that will have a negative impact on the concept of vaccinations in general.”

Leukocare is working with Italy’s ReiThera and Belgium’s Univercells to produce a COVID-19 vaccine currently in phase I testing.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, Patricia Weiss in Frankfurt and Caroline Copley in Berlin; Editing by Susan Fenton and Timothy Heritage)

WHO’s Tedros says ‘vaccine nationalism’ would prolong pandemic

By Stephanie Nebehay and Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) – WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that “vaccine nationalism” would only slow the effort to quash the pandemic and called for vaccines to be used fairly and effectively.

Tedros said 78 high-income countries had now joined the “COVAX” global vaccine allocation plan, bringing the total to 170 countries, and the “number is growing”. He urged others to join by the Sept. 18 deadline for binding commitments.

Joining the plan guaranteed those countries access to the world’s largest portfolio of vaccines, with nine candidates currently in the pipeline, he said, adding that a further four were “promising”.

The WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance are leading the COVAX facility, aimed at helping buy and distribute vaccination shots fairly around the world.

But some countries that have secured their own supplies through bilateral deals, including the United States, have said they will not join COVAX.

“Vaccine nationalism will prolong the pandemic, not shorten it,” Tedros told a WHO briefing in Geneva, without mentioning any specific countries.

“If and when we have an effective vaccine, we must also use it effectively … In other words, the first priority must be to vaccinate some people in all countries, rather than all people in some countries,” he said, adding that priority should be given to healthcare workers, the elderly and those with underlying conditions.

Tedros thanked Germany, Japan, Norway and the European Commission for joining COVAX during the last week.

“Certainly by the middle of 2021 we should start to see some vaccines actually moving into countries and populations,” said WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan, reiterating earlier comments.

Noting that there were 13 experimental vaccines currently in clinical trails, Swaminathan called it an “optimistic scenario” since the typical success rate of 10% could mean several vaccines are approved.

But Swaminathan said that no vaccine should be approved for a worldwide rollout until it had undergone sufficient scrutiny.

“No vaccine is going to be mass-deployed until regulators are confident, governments are confident, and the WHO is confident it has met the minimum standard of safety and efficacy,” she said.

Results were expected from some of the candidates already in phase 3 trials, each involving thousands of participants, by the end of the year or early 2021, Swaminathan said.

“We are not going to have enough for the whole world right at the beginning,” she said adding that scaling up of manufacturing would take time.

“Eventually there will be enough for everyone but it will mean prioritization,” she said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Emma Farge; Editing by Alison Williams and Giles Elgood)