The immunologist and developer of the Astrazeneca vaccine, Sarah Gilbert, demands more effort to make the corona vaccines available around the world.
Oxford – The developer of the Astrazeneca vaccine, Sarah Gilbert, has called for a fairer distribution of the available corona vaccine doses.
“It is more important than ever that we do not forget the lives that could be saved by giving first and second doses of vaccine to the most vulnerable populations around the world,” the Oxford University immunologist wrote this week with a colleague in the Science Translational Medicine journal. Greater efforts would have to be made to make vaccines available around the world.
By the beginning of September, a good 40 percent of the world’s population had received at least one dose of vaccine against Covid-19, but only just under two percent in the poorest countries. Booster vaccinations and the vaccination of children, as they are already taking place in Western countries, would increase the pressure on supply chains, the scientists wrote. “Nobody is safe until we are all safe.” As long as the vaccination rate is so low in many countries, there is still the risk of new, more dangerous variants, it said.
The Astrazeneca vaccine, which Gilbert and her team at Oxford University had developed in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company, was designed from the start to be easy to transport and inexpensive so that it could also be administered in developing countries. dpa
