Swaminathan, answering questions on social media platforms, also
said testing vaccines for safety and efficacy - usually a years-long
process - could be accelerated to just six months in the midst of
the pandemic, if data satisfied regulators that they have enough
information to issue approvals.
Still, she said, safety would be paramount.
"Whilst speed is important, it cannot be at the cost of compromising
on the safety or the efficacy standards," she said.
"It's not the case that the first vaccine is going to be rushed
through into injecting millions of people without having established
the fact whether it's really protecting you and whether it's safe
enough for use in large populations."
There are more than 200 COVID-19 vaccines in development, with two
dozen in human trials and a handful now entering late-stage studies
in thousands of patients. Swaminathan cited Moderna's experimental
mRNA vaccine, another which is a collaboration between Oxford
University and AstraZeneca, China's Cansino Biologics candidate, and
vaccine development project in Russia.
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For regulators to approve a vaccine, developers will have to follow trial
participants for months and show that there are fewer infections among people
given the vaccine than among those given a placebo or control shot.
"We would like to see as high protection as possible - 80%, 90% - that would be
fantastic," she said.
Swaminathan cautioned that only a small number of potential COVID-19 vaccines
are likely to make it through all trial stages and be approved for use.
"We have a very robust pipeline of vaccine candidates, which is excellent,
because normally the success rate...is around 10%," she said.
Asked if the world could fend off the coronavirus pandemic without a vaccine,
Swaminathan said pursuing a so-called herd immunity strategy would be deadly.
Some 60% of a population needs to be infected with COVID-19 to achieve herd
immunity, she said, a level which would see many people dying of the disease.
(Reporting by John Miller and Kate Kelland; Editing by Mark Potter and Hugh
Lawson)
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