BOGOTÁ (Reuters) – The World Health Organization may release AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use as early as this week, an official with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday.
“AstraZeneca’s vaccine is being evaluated. We hope that the authorization for emergency use will come out on Friday or next Monday, ”said PAHO Deputy Director Jarbas Barbosa during the group’s weekly briefing.
Chinese vaccines Sinopharm and Sinovac may obtain prequalification or approval for emergency use in early March, added Barbosa.
WHO is also evaluating Moderna’s swing.
PAHO previously said it is reserving up to 2.4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for Venezuela. The country needs to pay more than $ 100 million to the COVAX vaccine program to gain access, diplomats familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Although Venezuela should have already made the payment of COVAX, given the country’s “difficult” situation, PAHO is asking COVAX to be flexible in receiving the funds, Barbosa said.
Although the Americas reported almost half of all new global cases of COVID-19 last week and deaths continue to increase, some heavily affected countries such as the United States and Brazil are showing improvement, said PAHO director Dr. Carissa Etienne, during the briefing.
At least three newer and highly transmissible variants of the virus are present in the region, but PAHO is confident that the COVID-19 vaccines remain useful, she said.
“Based on the evidence we now have about the worrying variants, we are confident that our growing portfolio of COVID-19 vaccines remains useful and will guide us through the end of this pandemic,” said Etienne.
“The challenge now is to ensure that these vaccines are distributed quickly and fairly,” she added.
There were almost 1.6 million new cases in the region and the increase in deaths shows that many health systems remain overburdened, said Etienne.
The countries of Central America and the Caribbean and the triple Amazonian border region of Brazil, Colombia and Peru are centers of growing cases.
Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot