Iran Press/ Africa: The mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine produced at the World Health Organization-backed vaccine hub in South Africa could take up to three years to get approval if companies do not share their technology and data, a WHO official said on Friday.
As the Reuters said, the WHO-backed tech transfer hub in South Africa was set up in June to give poorer nations the know-how to produce COVID-19 vaccines, after market leaders of the mRNA COVID vaccine, Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna.
On Thursday, South Africa's Afrigen Biologics, which was part of WHO's consortium, said it has used the publicly available sequence of Moderna's mRNA vaccine to make its own version of the shot, according to Reuters.
The WHO has been trying to persuade Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to join forces with its African tech transfer hub.
Up to February, 5, 2022, the coronavirus figures in the world show that a total number of 5,744,397 people have been died out of the infection to the virus.
Also, a total number of 391,559,726 people have been infected with the coronavirus, of whom 310,376,266 have recovered.
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