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As the world celebrates advances in vaccines against the novel coronavirus, a leading WHO expert warned in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP) that public distrust risked making even the most effective treatments against the pandemic useless. .
“A vaccine that is in a freezer or refrigerator or shelf and is not used does nothing to help shorten this pandemic,” said Kate O’Brien, director of the World Health Organization’s immunization department. .
U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced Monday that their potential vaccine has been shown to be 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 infections in end-stage studies involving more than 40,000 people.
O’Brien hailed the interim results as “extremely important” and expressed hope that preliminary data from a handful of other candidate vaccines in equally advanced studies would soon be available.
If the comprehensive data shows that “one or more of these vaccines have very, very substantial efficacy, this is indeed good news to put another tool in the toolbox” to fight the pandemic, he said.
But with the pandemic continuing to grow after already claiming some 1.3 million lives, it has expressed deep concern over growing signs of hesitation about vaccines, with misinformation and distrust coloring people’s acceptance of scientific advances.
“We will not be successful as a world in controlling the pandemic with the use of vaccines as one of the tools unless people are willing to get vaccinated,” O’Brien said.
More needs to be done to increase “public confidence that the vaccines that WHO is involved in evaluating will not compromise safety or efficacy,” he said.
‘Climbing Everest’
O’Brien acknowledged that there were a number of outstanding questions about the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine candidate and his colleagues, including the duration of protection against the virus.
And while vaccine candidates are being tested for how effectively and safely they protect people from developing the disease, it’s unclear whether they actually avoid asymptomatic infection and transmission of the virus.
A big question, he said, is, “Does your probability of passing on to someone else change?”
Despite remaining questions, WHO is betting on one or more vaccines gaining approval soon, followed by a rapid increase in production and distribution.
Anticipating the huge demand for any approved vaccine, the UN health agency helped create the so-called Covax facility to ensure fair distribution.
But even with gigantic efforts, it will take a while before there are enough doses for everyone, and WHO has set guidelines on how to prioritize distribution.
“The goal here is that each country should be able to immunize 20% of its population by the end of 2021,” O’Brien said.
This, he said, would go a long way in providing protection to health workers and the most vulnerable populations, as well as those essential to keeping societies running, such as teachers.
After that, how quickly everyone else could access a vaccine will largely depend on the country they live in and whether their government has agreements to access the vaccines that get approved.
“We would expect a lot more doses in 2022,” O’Brien said.
Meanwhile, the logistical challenges of getting approved vaccines distributed to billions of people who need them are daunting, from manufacturing to ensuring transportation and storage at the extremely low temperatures required by some candidates.
“A vaccine that is highly effective and is safe … is still only valuable for public health impact if it actually gets to the people it needs to protect and is widely used in populations,” O’Brien said.
Developing a safe and effective vaccine “is like establishing a base camp on Everest,” he said.
“But actually getting to the impact of vaccines is (like) having to climb Everest.”
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