The Director-General (DG) of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned today that a vaccine “alone will not be enough” to defeat Covid-19.
At a press conference, the DG said that “a vaccine will complement the other tools we have at our disposal, but will not replace them.” This was the first public meeting he had attended since self-isolating after coming into contact with a person who later tested positive for Covid.
Of late, the DG of WHO, as well as several experts from the United Nations agency, have been moderating the optimism created last week concerning the imminent availability of an effective vaccine against Covid-19, when pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech announced that preliminary data from clinical trials of their vaccine showed an effectiveness rate of 90%.
He went on to say that “Initially the availability of the vaccine will be limited and therefore caregivers, the elderly and people at risk will have priority and we hope that this will reduce the number of deaths and provide an immunity boost for those who need it.” “But that will still leave a great deal of space in which the virus can operate,” warned the DG, who is calling for measures already employed to control the transmission of Covid-19, including testing, quarantine and monitoring of contact cases, not to be prematurely cast aside.
The pandemic has resurfaced in force in many countries in Europe, forcing authorities to take further steps to control the spread of the disease and new cases are increasing exponentially in many parts of the United States of America.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
