Safety of a prospective COVID-19 vaccine comes 'first and foremost': WHO

As a trial of a leading candidate from AstraZeneca was paused due to concerns over side effects, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) chief scientist on Wednesday said that the Safety of a prospective COVID-19 vaccine comes “first and foremost”.

Rollout of an effective vaccine is seen as a crucial step in helping battered economies recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

“Just because we talk about speed...it doesn’t mean we start compromising or cutting corners on what would normally be assessed,” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said in a social media event.

“The process still has to follow through rules of the game. For drugs and vaccines which are given to people, you have to test their safety, first and foremost,” she said.

WHO officials did not immediately respond directly to questions from Reuters over the move by AstraZeneca to pause global trials, including large late-stage trials, of its experimental coronavirus vaccine due to an unexplained illness in a study participant.

Read more: Australia expects to receive AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine soon

The vaccine, which AstraZeneca is developing with the University of Oxford, has previously been described by the WHO as probably the world’s leading candidate and the most advanced in terms of development.

The WHO is in the midst of rounding up support for a global coalition, called the ACT Accelerator, in the hope of fairly distributing vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics for the new coronavirus to rich and poor countries alike. In addition to 92 lower-income countries seeking aid, some 79 wealthier countries have expressed interest, with a September 18 deadline for binding commitments.

But some countries that have struck their own vaccine deals, including the United States which is not joining the WHO effort.