Technical Advisory Group for Covid-19 Vaccine Composition (Tag-Co-Vac) has already been formed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Covid vaccines need to be updated just like the current process used for flu jabs and the World Health Organization (WHO) is working to devise a central system. The strategy emulates a system currently used to decide on "strain updates" for flu shots, which are updated every six months, The Telegraph reported.
‘Technical Advisory Group for Covid-19 Vaccine Composition (Tag-Co-Vac) has already been formed by the World Health Organization (WHO).’
It is being worked together with experts from the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and other agencies including the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The plans for a global system are based on mounting concerns that a fragmented approach to future-proofing Covid shots would be counterproductive, reduce manufacturing capacity, exacerbate vaccine hesitancy, and worsen already vast imbalances in access to jabs worldwide, the report said.
Although scientists say it is not yet necessary to tweak existing jabs, yet they warn of the emergence of a vaccine-evading variant. Thus, developing a global mechanism to make decisions about how and when to introduce these next generation jabs will be "critical".
In line with this, the WHO has already formed the Technical Advisory Group on Covid-19 Vaccine Composition (Tag-Co-Vac) for this purpose.
"Tag-Co-Vac was set up basically to advise WHO, and for WHO to advise the world, on when there will be a need for a change in vaccine composition -- and if so, what would be the strain that should be used," Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at the WHO, told The Telegraph.
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While a pan-coronavirus vaccine will be the most complicated to develop, it would be the "ideal", the report said.
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Source-IANS