One dose of Pfizer vaccine, illustration – Esteban Felix / AP / SIPA
The World Health Organization granted, this Thursday, its first emergency approval since the start of the Covid pandemic – at Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine . “This is a very positive step towards ensuring universal access to anti-Covid vaccines – ”, explained Mariangela Simao, director in charge of access to medicines within the WHO, quoted in a press release.
Emergency approval has been based on the expert opinion on drug regulation from around the world as well
that of the WHO, specifies the UN agency , which concluded that it fulfilled the criteria “of safety, effectiveness and quality” allowing its use. This advice is all the more crucial for countries that do not have significant resources as the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is based on the use of messenger RNA, a new method for teaching the immune system to fight a virus. Moderna’s vaccine, already approved in several countries, is based on the same principle. Buy the vaccine for distribution in poor countries
This procedure, which WHO can use in the event of health emergency , allows countries that do not necessarily have the means to quickly determine the efficacy and safety of a drug on their own, to have faster access to therapies.
The procedure also allows Unicef, the agency of UN in charge of an important part of the logistics of distribution of anti-Covid vaccines in the world, and the Pan-American Health Organization to buy the vaccine for distribution in poor countries, the press release further emphasizes . Dr Simao added, however, that “an even greater effort was needed to be able to have enough vaccine doses to meet the needs of priority populations all over the world”
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has already been inoculated for several weeks in the United Kingdom, but also in the European Union , the United States or Switzerland for example. Several million people have already been immunized with this product estimated to be effective at 80% but which requires ultra-low temperatures of the order of less 20 degrees centigrade which makes distribution and storage more difficult.