WHO works to spread COVID vaccine technology to more nations

Geneva, Feb. 23 (BNA): The World Health Organization is creating a global training center to help poor countries make vaccines, antibodies and cancer treatments using RNA technology that has been successfully used to make COVID-19 vaccines.

At a press briefing in Geneva on Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the new center will be in South Korea and will share mRNA technology being developed by the WHO and its partners in South Africa, as scientists work to recreate COVID-19. A vaccine produced by Moderna. This effort is made without the help of our modernizer.

It is the first time that the World Health Organization has supported such an unconventional effort to reverse-engineer a commercially sold vaccine, ultimately making the pharmaceutical industry revolve around the pharmaceutical industry, which has largely prioritized supplying rich countries over the poor in both sales and manufacturing.

Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, licensed makers of two mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, declined to share the vaccine prescription or technology knowledge with the World Health Organization and its partners.

The World Health Organization said the joint technology we hope will not only lead to vaccines for the coronavirus, but will also be useful in making antibodies, insulin and treatments for diseases including malaria and cancer.

WHO chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan has estimated that trying to reproduce Moderna’s vaccine likely won’t yield any usable shots until late next year or even 2024, but said the timeline could be greatly shortened if the manufacturer agreed to help. .

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Global disparity in access to COVID-19 vaccines is enormous. Africa currently produces only 1% of the world’s COVID-19 vaccines and only about 11% of its population is immunized.

In contrast, a European country like Portugal has 84% ​​of its population fully vaccinated, and more than 59% of its population has also received a booster dose.

Last week, the World Health Organization said that six African countries – Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia – will receive technological knowledge and expertise to make COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

Tedros said on Wednesday that five other countries will now receive support from the South African hub: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Serbia and Vietnam.

Earlier this year, a Cape Town company that tried to clone Moderna’s COVID-19 shot said it had successfully made a candidate vaccine that would soon begin lab testing.

Scientists trying to make Moderna’s vaccine say there’s more information about that shot in the public domain and it’s believed to be a little easier to manufacture than that made by Pfizer-BioNTech.

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