“By 2022, we are going to see the emergence of improved vaccines,” Soumya Swaminathan said.
New Covid-19 vaccines, including those that do not require needles and can be stored at room temperature, may be ready for use later this year or next year, the world-leading scientist said.
Six to eight new vaccinations could complete clinical trials and be reviewed by the end of the year, the agency’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said in an interview on Saturday.
New vaccines will contribute to the ten already shown within a year after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic. The world needs more vaccinations, especially since the virus’s constant circulation produces dangerous new variants and drug manufacturers are struggling to keep orders. Only 122 countries have started immunizing people, according to data collected by Bloomberg.
“We are delighted with the vaccines we have,” said Swaminathan, an Indian pediatrician best known for her research on tuberculosis and HIV. But “we can improve further,” she said. “I think we will see the improvement of vaccines by 2022.”
The current crop of experimental vaccines uses alternative technologies and delivery systems, and contains more single-shot vaccinations, and vaccines administered orally, via a nasal spray, and through the skin using a type of patch. According to Swaminathan, this can lead to vaccinations that are better suited for specific groups, such as pregnant women.
More than 80 candidate vaccines are being studied in humans, although some are still in the early stages of testing and may not be successful. Companies with Covid-19 vaccines already in use have also begun testing updated versions designed to thwart variants of the coronavirus that have emerged in recent months.
Booster Shots
“We need to continue to support the research and development of more vaccine candidates, especially as the need for continued promotion of immunization of populations at this stage is not yet very clear,” Swaminathan said. “So we need to be prepared for that in the future.”
The WHO’s strategic advisory group for immunization experts is investigating whether people infected with SARS-CoV-2 should have two doses of vaccine. Some research suggests that a natural infection helps stimulate the immune response to SARS-CoV-2, just like a first dose, making a second injection unnecessary.
Swaminathan can only give one dose of vaccine to Covid-19 survivors, but Swaminathan said it could present “practical and logistical challenges in many countries” if blood tests were needed to measure patients’ antibody levels before deciding whether a second beat is justified.
The introduction of safe and effective vaccines also raises questions about how to conduct clinical trials of experimental vaccines effectively and ethically, she said. Farmers will be replaced with a ‘gold standard’ vaccine in a so-called non-inferior design if it is no longer ethical to use a placebo, Swaminathan said.
Global trial
Meanwhile, one approach the WHO is investigating is to compare three or four candidate vaccines simultaneously with a placebo. A similar study design was used to test the efficacy of drug therapies for Covid-19, which may mean that trial participants have an 80% chance of receiving an experimental vaccine and only a 20% chance of receiving placebo. get.
“We are now in talks with several companies with vaccines in development to see if we can launch something like this on a global trial platform,” Swaminathan said, adding that she is optimistic that such a study could take place in the first half of 2021. start.
A global trial with a wide group of people and countries offers several benefits, she said. Testing vaccines in different ethnic groups, age groups and people with different medical conditions makes the results more general, and if the epidemic disappears in some parts of the world, it is still active in others, she said.
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated stream.)