WHO ACT-Ac­cel­er­a­tor pri­or­i­tizes glob­al vac­cine ap­proach

The im­por­tance of a glob­al ap­proach to vac­cine de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion, with a fo­cus on col­lab­o­ra­tion, was a top­ic of a tech­ni­cal up­date and press brief­ing held 26 June by the WHO.

The usu­al prac­tices for drug de­vel­op­ment have been up­end­ed by the speed and scale of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, said of­fi­cials. “I’m very hope­ful and op­ti­mistic that this will be an un­prece­dent­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion that al­so sets a mod­el for the fu­ture,” said WHO Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Of­fi­cer Soumya Swami­nathan, MD, speak­ing in an up­date on WHO’s col­lab­o­ra­tive Ac­cess to COVID Tools (ACT) Ac­cel­er­a­tor project. “Com­pa­nies that are tra­di­tion­al­ly ri­vals are shar­ing” re­search pro­to­cols and oth­er da­ta and process­es usu­al­ly held as con­fi­den­tial com­mer­cial in­for­ma­tion, said Swami­nathan.

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