WHO announces COVID-19 vaccine insurance scheme in 92 low income nations

World Health Organization (WHO) and GAVI have together announced a scheme to provide compensation to people in low-income nations who might suffer any side-effects from COVID-19 vaccines. The scheme aiming to allay fears that could hamper the global rollout of shots would be implied in a total of 92 countries, mainly in Africa and South-East Asia. The criteria of selecting the nations which could avail the compensation are not yet known, AP reported.

The scheme was conceptualized after COVAX vaccine distributors showed reluctance to provide vaccine to be distributed to those countries which did not provide that could liability shield. As per WHO, the governments in the selected 92 nations would face little or no costs from claims brought by patients, should anything go unexpectedly wrong after a COVAX-distributed vaccine is administered. However, dozens of middle-income countries, such as South Africa, Lebanon, Gabon, Iran and most Latin American states, would not be offered this protection.

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If all goes well, the first doses of a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine will likely become available to some high-risk Americans in late December or early January, Dr Anthony Fauci said on October 29. The top immunologist, who had previously touted November as a month for the availability of a vaccine, asserted that looking the trial results, people could “hope” of a vaccine being available in “next few weeks”. Fauci’s remarks came while speaking to Dr France Collins, director of National Institute of health, live Facebook and Twitter.

Real-time review of vaccine

This comes as Moderna Inc said that British health regulators have started the real-time review of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. In a statement, the company said that Britain has begun “rolling review process” of its experiment vaccine mRNA-1273. The announcement by the drugmaker is followed by the promising results of the preclinical viral challenge study of the potential vaccine as well as the positive interim analysis of the Phase 1 study of its RNA-based vaccine in the people aged between 18 to 55 and older adults that are 56+.

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