What to expect in the next two years as the US continues to roll out new vaccines
A US$1 billion US-made vaccine has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in adults with COPD.
The FDA confirmed the approval on Monday.
Dr David Yaffe, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said that although the vaccine could be used in people with COPE, it was likely to have a limited use in people who already have COPD because of the severity of the disease.
“The benefits to the population are so much greater than the risks,” Dr Yaffe said.
“What this vaccine does is prevent a lot of the inflammation that we see in COPD.”
A number of countries have introduced their own vaccines in recent years, but only one of those was approved by US regulators.
Vaccines approved in Australia and the Netherlands have also shown promising results in reducing COPD mortality and COVID-19 rates.
“It’s a big leap forward in the field of preventive medicines,” Dr Zaki Makhmud, a senior medical scientist at the Institute for Infectious Diseases (IID) in Dubai, said.
He said there were “no indications” that COPD patients would benefit from the new vaccine.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have spent the past few years developing the vaccine and it is expected to be approved by both bodies by late 2020.
The new vaccine has also been approved for use by the EU.
“We have a very clear plan to be able to provide a vaccine in 2020,” Dr Makhud said.
The new vaccines will be delivered in a similar way to the first vaccines, Dr Mkhmud said.
“We’re talking about very high quality vaccines and that means there are a lot fewer side effects.”
The US vaccine has received more than $1 billion in funding and will be manufactured by Gilead Sciences, which is based in Menlo Park, California.
The company said it would start shipping its vaccine to the US in January 2021, and would deliver it by the end of the year.
It said it was committed to delivering the vaccine within three years.
The World Health Organization estimates that the virus causes approximately 200,000 deaths a year worldwide.
According to the WHO, there is a 25 per cent chance of contracting COVID in an individual, and an additional 10 per cent of cases could result in death.
Since its introduction in 2002, the virus has been the cause of several epidemics, most notably in the US, but it is still relatively rare in Europe and North America.