Vaccine alone won’t end coronavirus pandemic – WHO

…COVID-19 vaccine 94.5% effective, says Moderna

The Director General of World Health Organization, WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said yesterday that a vaccine would not by itself stop the coronavirus pandemic.

Ghebreyesus stated this on a day US biotech firm, Moderna, announced that its experimental vaccine against COVID-19 was 94.5 percent effective, marking a second major breakthrough in the vaccine hunt.

Pfizer had also last week said it had developed a vaccine that was 90% effective asgainst the virus.

The pandemic is raging months after it broke out, with infections soaring past 54 million and claiming more than 1.3 million lives.

“A vaccine will complement the other tools we have, not replace them. A vaccine on its own will not end the pandemic,” Ghebreyesus said.

The WHO’s figures for last Saturday showed that 660,905 coronavirus cases were reported to the UN health agency, setting a new high water mark.

That number, and the 645,410 registered on Friday, surpassed the previous daily record high of 614,013 recorded on November 7.

back link building services=0></a></div><p>The WHO boss said supplies of the vaccine would initially be restricted, with “health workers, older people and other at-risk populations (to) be prioritised. That will hopefully reduce the number of deaths and enable the health systems to cope.”</p><p>He, however, warned: “That will still leave the virus with a lot of room to move. Surveillance will need to continue, people will still need to be tested, isolated and cared for, contacts will still need to be traced… and individuals will still need to be cared for.”</p><p>Meanwhile, US biotech firm, Moderna, according to Reuters, said yesterday that its experimental vaccine against COVID-19 was 94.5 per cent effective, marking a second major breakthrough in the vaccine hunt.</p><p>Moderna released early results from a clinical trial with more than 30,000 participants, after US pharmaceutical company, Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, last week said their vaccine was 90 percent effective.</p><p>Both vaccine frontrunners are based on a new platform called messenger RNA, which is faster to produce than traditional vaccines and effectively turn human cells into vaccine factories.</p><p>“This positive interim analysis from our Phase 3 study has given us the first clinical validation that our vaccine can prevent COVID-19 disease, including severe disease,” said Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO.</p><p>The company plans to submit applications for emergency approval in the US and around the world within weeks and says it expects to have approximately 20 million doses ready to ship in the US by the end of the year.</p><p>Global infections from COVID-19 have soared past 54 million with more than 1.3 million deaths since the virus emerged in China late last year.</p><h2>READ ALSO: <span><a class=

US surpasses 10 million coronavirus cases ― Johns Hopkins

The Moderna vaccine, which was co-developed by the US National Institutes of Health, is given in two doses 28 days apart, and the preliminary results are based on 95 volunteers of the 30,000 who fell ill with COVID-19.