The wait for a covid-19 vaccine is going to be longer than we expect it to be: WHO

There is a lot of chatter around the covid-19 vaccine and other possible cures. On Tuesday, Baba Ramdev launched his own Corona kit saying that it will help in the treatment of coronavirus. In fact, he claimed that these medicines have 100% recovery rate within 3-7 days. But the Government of India’s AYUSH ministry promptly shut him down asking for proof of authenticity.

And now in a new turn of events, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is saying that people might have to wait for the vaccine a little longer as it might take another year to develop a foolproof remedy for covid-19. 

On 4th March 2020, WHO spokesperson, Tarik Jasarevic had said that, “There are no known effective therapeutics against this 2019-nCoV (virus) and the WHO recommends enrolment into a randomised controlled trial to test efficacy and safety.” 

More than 100 candidates are working on this vaccine
Speaking by video-conference to deputies from the European Parliament’s health committee, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that if such a vaccine became a reality, it should become a public good available to all.

“It would be very difficult to say for sure that we will have a vaccine,” Tedros said. “We never had a vaccine for a coronavirus. So this will be, when discovered, hoping that it will be discovered, it will be the first one,” he said.

He said the WHO had already more than 100 candidates for a vaccine of which one was at an advanced stage of development.

“Hoping that there will be a vaccine, the estimate is we may have a vaccine within one year. If accelerated, it could be even less than that, but by a couple of months. That’s what scientists are saying,” he concluded.

(With inputs from Reuters)