Geneva:
The troublesome storing situations of some candidate coronavirus vaccines and the connected higher charges need to not discourage nations from adopting them as an immunization signifies, Kate O’Brien, the director for Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals at the World Health Organization (WHO), stated on Friday.
“Every country is going to have to work very hard and is going to have to innovate around systems to actually deliver vaccines that do have an ultra-cold chain. And part of the approach that many countries may take is to choose to use vaccines that require an ultra-cold chain for only certain portions of the population that need to be vaccinated,” O’Brien stated at a virtual briefing.
As an instance, she stated such vaccines could be applied to inoculate wellness care workers at facilities in which installing a freezer with ultra-low temperatures would not be an problem.
“So I think the main message is that we do have the technology, there is demonstrated experience of delivering ultra-cold chain vaccines, even in some of the most difficult and remote areas, but that has also taken enormous resources to do that. So what we do need is a variety of vaccines that have different characteristics,” the official added.
Most of the promising candidate vaccines presently finishing phase 3 clinical trials belong to the so-known as cold-chain category, which means that they will need to be stored and transported at a specific temperature above which the efficacy would be jeopardized.
Pfizer’s mRNA-primarily based vaccine requirements to be stored in as cold of an atmosphere as -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit). Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, constructed on human adenovirus, needs at least -18 degrees Celsius.
Moderna’s mRNA-primarily based vaccine can be stored at regular refrigeration temperature from 2-8 degrees Celsius but only for a month, even though a longer storage period needs a reduce temperature.
All 3 candidate vaccines have verified to be more than 90 % effective so far.
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