The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday called on laboratories to share their technologies in order to increase the production of vaccines against Covid-19, at a time when US President Joe Biden warned that the pandemic could carry his country at the “breaking point”.
The Director General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called for “massive development of production capacities” for vaccines so as not to annihilate all the progress made in the fight against the pandemic.
He cited the example of the French pharmaceutical group Sanofi, which fell behind in the development of its own vaccine but offered to produce from this summer that of its competitor Pfizer / BioNTech, already widely authorized and effective. proven.
“We call on other companies to follow this example,” he said.
– “Do more”
The financial stakes are gigantic. Pfizer has estimated that 2021 sales of its anti-covid vaccine will reach a staggering $ 15 billion.
At the end of January the Swiss Novartis had also announced that it was providing capacity to package the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine in vials.
“Manufacturers can do more: they have received significant public funds, and we encourage them all to share data and technology to help equitable access to vaccines around the world,” said Dr Tedros.
At the same time, US President Joe Biden insisted on the difficulties in which the pandemic is plunging large numbers of Americans.
“I see a lot of pain in this country, a lot of people are out of work, a lot of people are hungry, a lot of people are at breaking point,” Biden said from the White House.
“The Americans are waiting for help from their government (…) I will act and I will act quickly”, he continued.
His government presented a $ 1.9 trillion aid plan to turn around the US economy, which is still recovering with a still sluggish job market despite a slight drop in the unemployment rate in January.
In Germany, the director of the epidemiological watch institute Robert Koch has also sounded the alarm. “The virus is not yet tired, on the contrary, it has just received a new boost” with the British and South African variants, lamented Lothar Wieler, showering hopes of a rapid lifting of restrictions in the face of a virus become “more dangerous”.
The vaccine developed by the firm AstraZeneca, now available, was limited in its use on Friday by other European countries. Spain has decided to reserve it for people under 55 and Greece for those under 65.
France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and other countries have set age limits for this vaccine, due to the lack of risk assessment in older populations.
In the United States, the Johnson & Johnson laboratory has requested an emergency authorization for its vaccine, which is particularly awaited and which can only be administered in a single dose.
However, its clinical results have raised concerns: the remedy has been shown to be more effective in the United States (72%) than in South Africa (57%), where a variant has become largely the majority.
Experts see it as an indication that future variants could end up completely bypassing the immune defenses developed by current vaccines.
– Sputnik V, “good news” –
Around the world, vaccine orders and deliveries are accelerating.
In Europe, helped by Beijing, Serbia is in the lead. In the small Balkan country of seven million people, more than 450,000 people received a dose in two weeks, the second vaccination rate in European countries after the United Kingdom, according to the scientific publication Our World in Data.
On the dedicated government site, people are invited to tick boxes to indicate their preferences. Pfizer, Sputnik V and Sinopharm are currently on the menu.
The Russian vaccine is “good news for mankind,” EU foreign minister Josep Borrell told Moscow on Friday, who “hoped the European Medicines Agency could certify”. His Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov stressed his willingness to cooperate in this area with his Western rivals.
– Contamination down –
At the same time as vaccination, restrictive measures are continuing.
Australia, which will launch its vaccination campaign later this month, announced on Friday that the requirement for all people entering the country to observe a two-week quarantine was maintained.
As for Sweden and Denmark, they announced that in the coming months they would develop electronic “vaccine passports” to facilitate travel abroad, but also to access sporting or cultural events, or even restaurants in the Danish case.
For its part, Israel announced on Friday that it would maintain the suspension of international flights and the closure of its land borders even if it will gradually lift from Sunday the containment in force for more than a month, after a slight decrease in the number of contaminations.
According to a report established Thursday by AFP, the pandemic has killed at least 2,285,334 worldwide and more than 104,848,470 cases of infection have been officially diagnosed.
More than 120 million doses of antiCovid vaccines have been administered in at least 82 countries or territories, according to a count made by AFP on Friday from official sources.
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