'Ultra-cold chain coronavirus vaccine and associated high costs shouldn't hinder use': WHO

Director for Immunisation, Vaccines and Biologicals at World Health Organisation (WHO), Kate O’Brien on vember 27 said that troublesome storing conditions for some candidate COVID vaccines and associated high costs should t discour countries from opting m as immunisation methods. While speaking at a virtual briefing, O’Brien suggested countries choose to use “ultra-cold chain” vaccines for only certain portions of population that need to be vaccinated. She also said that such vaccines could be used to iculate health care workers at facilities where installing a freezer with ultra-low temperatures would t be an issue. 

O’Brien said, “Every country is going to have to work very hard and is going to have to invate around systems to actually deliver vaccines that do have an ultra-cold chain. And part of approach that many countries may take is to choose to use vaccines that require an ultra-cold chain for only certain portions of population that need to be vaccinated”. 

She ded, “So I think main mess is that we do have techlogy, re is demonstrated experience of delivering ultra-cold chain vaccines, even in some of most difficult and remote areas, but that has also taken ermous resources to do that. So what we do need is a variety of vaccines that have different characteristics”. 

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Meanwhile, promising candidate vaccines, which are currently completing phase 3 clinical trials, belong to “cold-chain” category, meaning that y need to be stored and transported at a certain temperature above which efficacy would be jeopardised. While Pfizer mRNA-based vaccine needs to be stored in as cold of an environment as -70 degrees Celsius, Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine also requires at least -18 degrees celsius. Moderna’s mRNA-based vaccine, on or hand, can be stored at rmal refrigeration temperature, but only for a month. 

All three aforementioned vaccine candidate have proven to be over 90 per cent efficient so far. Earlier this week, WHO Director-General also stated that positive results from vaccine trials were a “light at end of this long, dark tunnel” but significance of scientific achievement “cant be overstated”. At a press briefing, Director-General Tedros ham Ghebreyesus stressed that while nations have set “a new standard for vaccine development”, re’s a need for international community to “set a new standard for access” as well. Tedros emphasized challenges of distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to world population, an integral part to end COVID-19 pandemic. 

(With inputs from ANI) 

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