|
| 
Published Thursday, October 29, 2020
World races to develop a safe covid-19
vaccine, Health Organization says
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
While the Americas urgently awaits a breakthrough, the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO, will only support the distribution of a vaccine that has proven to be safe and effective in clinical trials, reviewed by National Regulatory Authorities and recommended by the World Health Organization, WHO, PAHO Director Carissa F. Etienne, said.
“It is important to emphasize that while we’re working to develop a vaccine faster than ever before, the process to guarantee its safety and efficacy is unchanged,” Etienne told a press briefing in Washington, DC. She noted that there is a pipeline of more than 180 vaccine candidates under study, with 11 in phase III clinical trials.
What has changed “is the unprecedented attention on the vaccine development process,” she added, highlighting the “over-abundance of information from a number of sources, some less reliable than others and not based on science, which has led to confusion and misinformation around vaccine safety.”
Etienne emphasized that vaccines are designed and manufactured with safety in mind. Once a covid-19 vaccine proves safe and effective in a clinical trial, regulatory agencies thoroughly evaluate the data prior to granting approvals and WHO will also oversee an independent review process before granting its own recommendation.
“How we communicate about covid-19 will make our ability to control the pandemic,” Etienne said. She calls for countries, the media, regulatory authorities, the private sector and the scientific community to come together to provide the public with “clear, concise and science-based information about a future covid-19 vaccine.”
According to PAHO, an important factor to establish trust in the new vaccines is to ensure their accessibility to all countries. The health international organization is supporting countries to gain access to these vaccines through the COVAX facility, Etienne said.
“Virtually every country in Latin America and the Caribbean has joined or is in the process of joining the facility,” she said, and countries are taking legal and budgetary steps needed to participate in this innovative global partnership. “We are actively collaborating with financial institutions, like the Inter-American Development Bank, to support countries in our region access the funding needed to purchase vaccines through the COVAX facility when they are available,'' she added.
According to PAHO, in the Caribbean, 11 countries will receive financial support for initial payments to join the COVAX facility, in collaboration with the Caribbean Public Health Agency and the European Union.
Meanwhile, the contagion of covid-19 continues causing deaths in the country, according to the Ministry of Health.
On Wednesday, the ministry reported the following updated statistics of the covid-19 contagion in the country:
• 1,231 new covid-19 cases, bringing the total to 40,217 active cases.
• 16,963 foreign-born people have been infected with a total of 106,553 cases since March, approximately 16% of the total cases. Of these, authorities confirmed the death of 32 foreign-born patients.
• 477 patients are being treated in public hospitals, where 188 patients are in ICU’s in delicate health conditions (ages range from a 1-year-old to a 100-year-old). And 289 patients are in recovery rooms. Many of the remaining infected patients are quarantined in their homes.
• 64,996 coronavirus patients have fully recovered, which is a 61% recovery rate of the total cases since March.
• 1,340 deaths of people infected with covid-19, approximately 1.3% death rate of the total cases since March. Of these 515 women and 825 men. The ages range from a 9-year-old to a 100-year-old person.
Since Friday, Oct. 16, authorities stopped providing the updated statistics on people who have been ruled out and the number of medical covid-19 tests that have been made.
Readers can see the updated number of total
patients in each district at the National Distance
Education University on its Covid-19 Map.
As of Wednesday night, the pandemic has killed 1,172,684 people at the global level, according to recent statistics reported by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering, CSSE, at Johns Hopkins University.
-------------------------
Should governments guarantee free access to the covid-19 vaccine? We would like to know
your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to news@amcostarica.com
|
