BOGOTA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization may eliminate AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use as early as this week, an official with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Wednesday.
“The AstraZeneca vaccine is being evaluated. We expect the emergency use permit to come out next Friday or Monday, ”said Jarbas Barbosa, PAHO deputy director during the group’s weekly meeting.
China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac shots may get prior qualification or emergency approval in early March, Barbosa added.
The WHO is also evaluating the feature of Modern.
PAHO previously said it reserves up to 2.4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for Venezuela. The country has to pay more than $ 100 million for the COVAX vaccine program to access it, diplomats familiar with the situation have told Reuters.
Although Venezuela should have made its payment with COVAX, given the country’s “difficult” situation, PAHO is asking COVAX to be flexible in receiving the funds, Barbosa said.
While the Americas reported nearly half of new global cases of COVID-19 over the past week and deaths continue to rise, some heavily affected countries such as the United States and Brazil show improvements, the PAHO director said. , Carissa Etienne, during the information session.
At least three newer, highly transmissible variants of the virus are present in the region, but PAHO is confident that COVID-19 vaccines remain useful, he said.
“Based on the evidence we have now on variants of concern, we are confident that our growing portfolio of COVID-19 vaccines remains useful and will guide us to the end of this pandemic,” Etienne said.
“The challenge now is to ensure that these vaccines are distributed quickly and equitably,” he added.
There were about 1.6 million new cases in the region and the increase in deaths shows that many health systems remain overflowing, Etienne said.
The countries of Central America and the Caribbean and the Amazon border area of Brazil, Colombia and Peru are centers of increasing cases.
Report by Julia Symmes Cobb; Edited by Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot