Wed 02 September 2020:
More than 150 countries are setting up the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX.
The Trump Administration on Wednesday said that the US will not join the global effort to develop and distribute a vaccine for the COVID-19, caused by coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2. The Trump administration cited that it does not want to be constrained by multilateral groups like the World Health Organization.
The decision to go all alone came in the backdrop of the White House’s earlier decision to pull out from the World Health Organisation (WHO), claiming that the global health body is in need of reform and is heavily influenced by China, where the novel coronavirus was originated.
“The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere.
Some countries are working to secure direct supplies of the vaccine, while others are collaborating to ensure eradication of the disease that has no geographical boundaries. More than 150 countries are setting up the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX.
The cooperative efforts of countries along with the WHO would allow them to take the portfolios of different vaccines developed by different countries to ensure that the vaccine will be made available to their citizens as soon as possible.
A handful of the dozens of experimental COVID-19 vaccines in human testing have reached the last and biggest hurdle — looking for the needed proof that they really work.
AstraZeneca announced Monday its vaccine candidate has entered the final testing stage in the U.S. The Cambridge, England-based company said the study will involve up to 30,000 adults from various racial, ethnic and geographic groups.
Two other vaccine candidates began final testing this summer in tens of thousands of people in the U.S. One was created by the National Institutes of Health and manufactured by Moderna Inc., and the other developed by Pfizer Inc. and Germany’s BioNTech.
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