LONDON – Under the Christmas tree, Europe could find the coronavirus vaccine. “We are not light years away,” said Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief of medical advisers to the British government, in a closed-door hearing with a committee of the House of Commons. “It is not completely unrealistic to expect that we will be able to distribute the vaccine right after Christmas.”
What the authoritative expert refers to is the vaccine in advanced testing phase in the Oxford laboratories, in collaboration with the Italian center of Pomezia, which will be produced by AstraZeneca, one of the global giants of the pharmaceutical industry. Phase three of the tests, Van-Tam told Westminster MPs according to rumors reported this morning by the Sunday Times, could start in December and hopefully it is possible that distribution will begin by the end of the year.
Italy, which collaborates in the development of the vaccine through the laboratories of Pomezia, has already booked a large quantity of doses that AstraZeneca will have the task of distributing throughout Europe. The hypothesis of having a Covid 19 vaccine available as early as the end of 2020, notes the deputy chief medical advisor in London, “would have a significant impact on hospital admissions and the number of victims” of the pandemic. Thousands of NHS (National Health Service) doctors and nurses are receiving training to administer the vaccine before the end of the year, the Times writes.
Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday has published a video showing the first doses of another vaccine under study, the one developed by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which are leaving its plants in Puurs, Belgium. They are designed to be distributed around the world as soon as clinical trials are successfully completed and the health authorities that regulate the sector will judge them to be effective and safe. Pfizer hopes to have 100 million doses available this year and 1.3 billion by 2021. “Seeing that all the work done resulted in a product made me smile,” said the CEO of the company. Ben Osborn company. And the English newspaper headlines: “Here is the video the world was waiting to see”.
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