The WHO has greenlighted seven vaccines for emergency use listing following finalization of their evaluation process. The vaccines that have been approved are the PfizerBioNtech, Oxford Astra Zeneca, Covishield, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, Sinopharm and Sinovac.
Among the countries that will be producing these vaccines will be Australia, Japan and Korea which will manufacture the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine, Germany, Switzerland and Kalamazoo in the US will manufacture the PfizerBioNtech and Italy will be among the additional sites that will be producing the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.
Out of about 180 vaccines which are being trialed around the world, 22 have been submitted to the WHO for evaluation for their safety and efficacy.
Among those which are currently being evaluated before they can be finalized for emergency use listing are three more vaccines from China. They are the Ad5-nCoV by CanSinBio, the recombinant novel coronavirus vaccine by Zhifei Longcom and the SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine from IMBCAMS China.
Assessments are also ongoing for Covaxinwhich is to be produced by Bharat Biotech in India and Sputnik V by Gamaleya for which additional data is still required and the WHO is following up on inspection observations.
The WHO is awaiting information from BioCubaFarma in Cuba about the strategy and timeline for the production of its Soberanavaccine.
Other vaccine manufacturers who have submitted formulaes for evaluation are China’s Clover Biopharmaceuticals , US based Novavaxand Sanofi Pasteur Inc, the Vector State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology in Russia, Sinopharm/WIBP in China and the German biotech firm CureVac.
