The availability of an effective vaccine against COVID19 will be critical to the worldwide control of a disease that is responsible for over 1.2 million deaths worldwide to date. There being quite a lot of vaccines lately. The session focused on reviewing; the most promising candidate vaccines, the steps in the process from development to approval, and distribution and identify issues for future investigation.
Moderated by Dr Daniel Ochiel- the Director of Laboratory Programs for Africa at IAVI, Nairobi, Kenya. The session consisted of four more panelists namely;
- Dr. Lawrence Stanberry- Professor of Pediatrics, Associate Dean for International Programs and Director of the Programs in Global Health at Columbia University.
- Prof. Omu Anzala- Professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.
- Dr. Philip LaRussa- A pediatric infectious disease specialist.
- Dr. Yanis Ben Amor- Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, at the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
The team throughout this one and a half hour session delved deeply into the vaccine issues highlighting the fact that there are currently 59 different types of vaccines being tested in humans and out of the 59, only 16 have managed to reach the final phase of testing. This according to Dr. Lawrence Stanberry is alarming as the development, testing, and distribution of candidate vaccines has proceeded on a scale and at a speed that is unprecedented in the history of modern vaccines.
From the presentations made, the vaccines that have managed to reach the final phase of testing are; Pfizer vaccine, Sinopharm vaccine, Moderna vaccine, CanSino Biologics vaccine, sputnik vaccine, Astra- Zeneca vaccine, J&J- Deaaconess vaccine, Bharat Biotech vaccine, Novavax vaccine, CureVac vaccine, AnGes vaccine, Medicago vaccine, Anhui Zifei vaccine, Sinopharm vaccine, Sinovac vaccine and Institute of Medical Biology vaccine.
From this session, we got to see the unity of mankind by the world coming together through global cooperation in developing vaccines to combat the Covid- 19 virus, as was shared by Dr. Yanis Ben Amor.