{"id":276466,"date":"2020-11-24T02:06:19","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T07:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=276466"},"modified":"2020-11-24T02:06:19","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T07:06:19","slug":"who-chief-sees-light-at-the-end-of-long-dark-tunnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/11\/24\/who-chief-sees-light-at-the-end-of-long-dark-tunnel\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO chief sees ‘light at the end of long, dark tunnel’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus gave an upbeat assessment on vaccine development after recent data showed that more Covid-19 cases had been reported in a recent four weeks than in first four months of the pandemic. (File photo<\/a>: @DrTedros\/Twitter<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GENEVA\u00a0\u2013 With current vaccine developments, the light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel is growing brighter, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief said Monday.<\/p>\n

WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus gave an upbeat assessment on vaccine development after recent data showed that more Covid-19 cases had been reported in a recent four weeks than in first four months of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

He was speaking at a twice-weekly press webinar in Geneva on the novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Tedros warned, “The urgency with which vaccines have been developed must be matched by the same urgency to distribute them fairly.”<\/p>\n

He said: “With the latest positive news from vaccine trials, the light at the end of this long, dark channel is growing brighter.<\/p>\n

“There is now real hope that vaccines, in combination with other tried and tested public health measures, will help to end the pandemic,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

He stressed that no vaccines in history had been developed as rapidly as now.<\/p>\n

“The scientific community has a new standard for vaccine development. Now, the international community must set the new standard for access,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The WHO was asked to comment on news of a vaccine developed by the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca at Oxford University that has 70 percent efficacy against the novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n

The WHO’s chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, said this news followed on “encouraging results from the two earlier vaccines” that Pfizer and Moderna announced.<\/p>\n

She said that the “The AstraZeneca vaccine is a viral vector vaccine. So, I think the good news is that vaccines for Covid-19 disease are possible to make.<\/p>\n

“And it’s possible that we will have a number of vaccine candidates that can be used in the fight against this disease,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Like Tedros, Swaminathan said, “We would like to provide access to as many efficacious and safe vaccines as possible so that we can cover the population around the world.<\/p>\n

“Remember, we have to cover a huge number of billions and billions of people, and this is unprecedented. And we will need all the manufacturing capacity in the world to be able to do that.”<\/p>\n

On the AstraZeneca results, she said the WHO had heard only the preliminary results about the vaccine trials in the UK.<\/p>\n

“I think we need to wait to see the results both of the efficacy and the safety,” said Swaminathan.<\/p>\n

She noted that AstraZeneca vaccine is also being currently trialed in many other countries, and eventually, there should be details on about 60,000 patients “that will enable us to have a much more informed decision.”\u00a0(Anadolu)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GENEVA\u00a0\u2013 With current vaccine developments, the light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel is growing brighter, the World Health …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":276467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-anadolu","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276468,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276466\/revisions\/276468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}