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-Editorial
Under the World Health Organization’s coordination, a group of experts with diverse backgrounds is working towards the development of vaccines against COVID-19.
The group makes a call to everyone to follow recommendations to prevent the transmission of the COVID-19 virus and protect the health of individuals. The group also thanks to everyone for putting their trust in the scientific community.
“While a vaccine for general use takes time to develop, a vaccine may ultimately be instrumental in controlling this worldwide pandemic,” the group said in a joint statement. “In the interim, we applaud the implementation of community intervention measures that reduce the spread of the virus and protect people, including vulnerable populations, and pledge to use the time gained by the widespread adoption of such measures to develop a vaccine as rapidly as possible.”
On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China.
Chinese authorities identified the SARS-CoV-2 as the causative virus on 7 January 2020, and the disease was named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by WHO on 11 February 2020.
As part of WHO’s response to the outbreak, a Research and Development Blueprint has been activated to accelerate the development of diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics for this novel coronavirus.