The world welcomed with relief biotechnology firm Moderna’s announcement Monday that initial results suggested its coronavirus vaccine candidate was nearly 95 percent effective at preventing the illness. Markets soared on the promising news.
“Last week, we had 60,000 deaths,” Edward Kelly, director of the WHO’s work on service delivery and safety, said during a news briefing. “We had 4 million new cases. We will have more of those weeks before the vaccine is out there.”
Public health officials have long warned that the development of an effective vaccine would be the beginning of a struggle just as steep: an effort to vaccinate the world.
“It’s not vaccines that save people; it’s vaccinations that will actually save people,” Kelly said.
Katherine O’Brien, director of the WHO’s immunization department, said the discovery of a highly effective vaccine was like building a base camp on Mount Everest. “The climb to the peak is really about delivering the vaccines,” she said.
The caution at the world’s top public health body was not directed toward the achievements of Moderna and other vaccine developers, but at creating a realistic understanding of the enormous task of immunization. Supply and delivery will pose high hurdles, among others, even if a vaccine is highly effective, according to public health experts. ...
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