Life will not return to normal until 2022, warns WHO

CAPE TOWN - Hopes that that we’ll go back to the way things used to be, were raised following the announcement that two Covid-19 vaccine candidates show to be at least 90 percent effective.

On Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that its Covid-19

vaccine candidate is more than 90 per cent effective during a major trial.

While Russia also announced on Wednesday, that it’s Sputnik V vaccine is 92 percent effective at protecting people from Covid-19 according to interim trial results.

Despite these developments, the World Health Organisation says life will not return to normal until 2022 at the earliest.

“The return to pre-Covid life might not be for a while. We’re looking at 2022 at least before enough people start getting the vaccine to build immunity, which means that, for a long time to come,”

“We have to continue to use public health tools and measures that we know are effective in preventing the infection and breaking the chain of transmission, including physical distancing, masking, avoiding crowds and respiratory hygiene,” said the global health body.

Pfizer and BioNTech expect to be able to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses globally in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

The data from the full trial will be submitted for scientific peer-review publication.

The figures presented so far are based on the first 94 volunteers to develop Covid-19.

The overall effectiveness of the vaccine may change when the full results are released.

Of more than 200 vaccine candidates in the pipeline, 47 are in clinical development – meaning they are being tested in humans. Ten candidates have reached phase III of clinical trials

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