The AstraZeneca vaccine that is being produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII), which arrived in Bosnia as a donation from Serbia on Tuesday, is included in WHO’s emergency use listing after it was determined that it meets “the criteria of quality, safety and efficacy,” World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Europe, Hans Kluge, told N1 at a press conference on Thursday.
Concerns about the quality of the SII-produced vaccines emerged after Bosnia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Bisera Turkovic, said that the vaccines Serbia donated are “mainly used in poor countries” and are not approved in the EU.
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Kluge pointed out that those vaccines are being used in several countries already and that he and WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, spoke to Bosnia’s three Presidency members on “ensuring equal access in the country” on Tuesday.
“Everyone is working together, both the country and the international community, to get these vaccines, including Pfizer’s, as soon as possible on the ground, as we speak,” he said.
WHO’s Regional Adviser for Vaccine-preventable Diseases and Immunization for Europe, Siddhartha Datta, said he is happy to “debunk the myth” that the vaccines are different because of where they were produced.
He stressed that the WHO has included the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by manufacturers in India and South Korea in the emergency use listing only after “both these production nodes have been reviewed for good manufacturing practices.”
“I think it’s not a matter of the country of origin which will determine who gets what – it’s a matter of the availability of the vaccine volume and how quickly the vaccines can be made available to the country respective of their income level. And the country and the population gets the benefit of this vaccine. That has been the main pillar of the principle that COVAX has used and will remain the same pillar in terms of the allocation of the vaccine, irrespective of its country of origin,” Datta said.
The World Health Organization is recording a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as an increase in new cases in several Western European countries.
Kluge called on countries to refrain from bilateral agreements that would undermine COVAX and said states are also responsible for the rapid vaccination of health workers on the frontline.
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