Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker LIVE Updates: Seventy-six wealthy nations are now committed to joining a global COVID-19 vaccine allocation plan co-led by the World Health Organization (WHO) that aims to help buy and fairly distribute the shots, the project’s co-lead said on Wednesday. Seth Berkley, chief executive of the GAVI vaccines alliance, said the plan, known as COVAX, now has Japan, Germany, Norway and more than 70 other nations signed up, agreeing in principle to procure COVID-19 vaccines through the facility for their populations. “We have, as of right now, 76 upper middle income and high income countries that have submitted confirmations of intent to participate – and we expect that number to go up,” Berkley told Reuters in an interview.
Here are the latest updates on the Covid-19 vaccine tracker:
• The Trump administration has urged US states to get ready to distribute a potential Covid-19 vaccine by November 1, two days before the presidential election. Dallas-based wholesaler McKesson Corp. has a deal with the federal government and will be requesting permits to set up distribution centers when a vaccine becomes available. “The normal time required to obtain these permits presents a significant barrier to the success of this urgent public health program,” Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told states in an August 27 letter. “CDC urgently requests your assistance in expediting applications for these distribution facilities.” Redfield asked states to consider waiving requirements that would “prevent these facilities from becoming fully operational by November 1, 2020.”
• In the US, priority will be given to essential workers, national security officials, seniors and members of vulnerable racial and ethnic groups, according to The New York Times. Three Western drug makers are progressing with their Phase 3 clinical trials, involving tens of thousands of participants. The three are AstraZeneca, which is partnering with Oxford University in England; Moderna, collaborating with the US National Institutes of Health; and the Pfizer/BioNTech alliance. By the nature of the trials, it is difficult to predict when reliable results will emerge.
• Tesla Inc’s CEO Elon Musk met with three German ministers and other senior politicians on Wednesday to discuss the progress of a collaboration between the car maker and a German biotech company and a planned electric vehicle factory. Ralph Brinkhaus, leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU conservative parliamentary bloc, said Musk was satisfied with the progress of Tesla’s alliance with vaccine developer CureVac. Tesla is helping to build mobile molecule printers to make the potential COVID-19 vaccine under development by CureVac.
• The White House pushed back on concerns expressed by the World Health Organization (WHO) after a U.S. health official said a coronavirus vaccine might be authorized for use without completing full trials. The White House also said that the United States would not join a global effort to develop, manufacture and distribute a coronavirus vaccine because of the WHO involvement. About 172 countries are engaging with the WHO’s COVID-19 vaccine plan to ensure equitable access to vaccines, known as COVAX. “The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement on Tuesday.
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