A vaccine for the coronavirus could be ready by the end of the year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the end of a two-day meeting of the organization's executive board that “We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we may have a vaccine. There is hope.”
Nine potential coronavirus vaccines are currently in development at COVAX global vaccine facility which is run by the WHO. The organization hopes to have two billion doses of a vaccine available by the end of 2021.
Last week, the pharmaceutical company Moderna, one of the leading companies in the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine, reported that its vaccine would not be ready for FDA approval until after the US Presidential Elections next month.
Moderna Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel told the Financial Times: “November 25 is the time we will have enough safety data to be able to put into an EUA [emergency use authorization] file that we would send to the FDA — assuming that the safety data is good, ie a vaccine is deemed to be safe.”