On the 26th local time, WHO held a regular press conference on new coronary pneumonia. WHO chief scientist Sumia Swaminathan said that the shortest vaccine currently used globally is the Ebola vaccine, which took 5 years. It also took 2 years to develop the Zika virus vaccine, but it has not yet had the opportunity to conduct large-scale trials.
Sumia Swaminathan pointed out that vaccine development usually takes 8 to 10 years, and WHO hopes to shorten the time as much as possible, and the research and development will be successful in 12-18 months (from January 2020 onwards). This is an unprecedented speed and can only be achieved through global cooperation.
There are currently more than 200 candidate vaccines worldwide, 15 of which are undergoing human clinical trials. While accelerating the research and development of vaccines, we should expand the production equipment of multiple candidate vaccines in advance, so that hundreds of millions of vaccines can be produced as soon as possible.
Sumia Swaminathan also emphasized that the new crown vaccine should be a global public product, and many companies have shared their scientific research knowledge and resources. (Headquarters reporter Zhu He)