In Russia, a mechanism should be created to update the composition of vaccines against coronavirus, the pathogen must be constantly monitored, Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, told T.
“The meaning of this system should be to constantly monitor this pathogen: to identify new antigenic variants, to check how much the old vaccine protects against new antigenic variants, and on the basis of this, give scientists and manufacturers the task of making a new vaccine or using the old one” , – he said.
According to Gunzburg, the World Health Organization (WHO) has not organized effective monitoring of the COVID-19 pathogen. At the same time, influenza viruses are monitored, which makes it possible to determine the effectiveness of the previous vaccine every year.
On May 5, the WHO lifted the state of emergency due to the coronavirus infection. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced this on Twitter. “I am announcing that we no longer consider the coronavirus a global health threat,” Ghebreyesus said at a briefing.
The organization designated COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, which means that the global epidemic of coronavirus infection lasted 3 years, one month and 24 days. Since then, according to the organization, about 20 million people have died from the coronavirus, while the official number of deaths is about 7 million people, the head of WHO said.
