GENEVA (AP) – The head of the World Health Organization said on Monday that the emergence of new variants of COVID-19 raised questions about whether existing vaccines will work or not, calling “worrying news” that vaccines developed so far they may now be less effective against the variant first detected in South Africa.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference that South Africa’s decision on Sunday to suspend its AstraZeneca vaccination campaign is “a reminder that we need to do everything we can to reduce the circulation of the virus with proven measures of public health”.
He said it is increasingly clear that vaccine manufacturers need to adjust their existing vaccines to deal with the ongoing genetic evolution of the coronavirus, saying that booster vaccines are likely to be needed, especially as new variants of the virus are now spreading globally. and seem likely to become the predominant strains.
Tedros added that WHO expects to make a decision “in the next few days” on whether to recommend an emergency use list for the AstraZeneca vaccine. This designation would allow millions of doses to be sent to poor countries as part of a UN-supported effort to distribute COVID-19 vaccines known worldwide as COVAX.
Last week, Tedros said that more than three quarters of the COVID-19 vaccines were administered in just 10 countries and that immunization in almost 130 countries has not yet started. Despite WHO’s goal of initiating vaccination with COVID-19 in poor countries at the same time as in rich countries, COVAX has not distributed a dose of the vaccine anywhere.
Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist, said people should not conclude from South Africa’s decision that the AstraZeneca vaccine does not work. She said that all the evidence available so far shows that vaccines developed so far reduce deaths, hospitalizations and serious illnesses.
Other COVID-19 vaccines developed by Novavax, Pfizer and BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson also appear to be less effective against the strain first identified in South Africa, although they can prevent serious diseases.
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