WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said phase three of COVID-19 vaccine trials were underway, adding “I’m hopeful, I’m optimistic, but you know vaccine development is a complex undertaking.”
Swaminathan said phase 3 is the phase which will “definitively prove whether a vaccine is efficacious and safe.” She said vaccine development comes with a lot of uncertainty and added, “The good thing is we have many different vaccine candidates and platforms. So even if the first one fails or the second fails, we shouldn’t lose hope. We shouldn’t give up.”
The Chief Scientist said WHO was working on a “fair allocation mechanism” and noted that discussions were underway with countries on how to share a limited supply of vaccine. She explained, “Let’s say you have fifty or a hundred million doses at the end of this year. Okay. How should the world share that? Should it go only to the countries which have paid for it or are capable of paying for it, to cover their own populations? Or should it go to protect frontline health workers or the most vulnerable people, whether they are the elderly or whether there are people with other diseases and certainly frontline workers, health workers, but also other kinds of first responders are at the highest risk as we’ve seen, unfortunately.”
Swaminathan said data analysis by the recovery trial safety monitoring board found that there is no benefit in the use of hydroxychloroquine on mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. She added, “Where there is still a gap is: Does it have any role at all in prevention? Or in minimizing the severity of the illness in early infection? Or even in preventing infection? We don’t know that as yet, and we need to complete those large trials and get the data so again, we have a definite answer on that.”
The Chief Scientist said the global community want to know if a drug reduces mortality or not to determine whether or not to use it. She said there is a similar situation now with Lopinavir, Ritonovir now which is currently being studied. She said there were some 3,000 patients in the Lopinavir, Ritonovir arm and a similar number in the standard of care arm of the trial; “so, this is already a huge number and should be enough to tell us whether this drug is actually having a mortality benefit or a benefit in reducing the severity of the illness.”
(Excepts from interview)
