Bahrain said on Friday it has granted emergency use authorisation for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the second country after Britain to approve it.
The Gulf Arab state had also approved Sinopharm’s COVID-19 vaccine in November for use by frontline workers.
“The approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will add a further important layer to the Kingdom’s national COVID-19 response,” Dr. Mariam Al Jalahma, CEO of Bahrain’s National Health Regulatory Authority said in a statement.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), meanwhile, warned that the roll-out of vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic will not, on its own, eliminate the virus.
“Vaccines do not equal zero Covid. Vaccines and vaccination… by themselves, they will not do the job,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a virtual news conference, adding that “the vaccine will not be with everyone early next year”.
“Progress on vaccines gives us all a lift and we can now start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, WHO is concerned that there is a growing perception that the Covid-19 pandemic is over,” he said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the pandemic still had a long way to run and that decisions made by citizens and governments would determine its course in the short run and when the pandemic would ultimately end.
“We know it’s been a hard year and people are tired, but in hospitals that are running at or over capacity it’s the hardest it can possibly be,” he said. “The truth is that at present, many places are witnessing very high transmission of the COVID-19 virus, which is putting enormous pressure on hospitals, intensive care units and health workers.”
Britain approved Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, jumping ahead of the rest of the world in the race to begin mass inoculations. The move raised hopes that the tide could soon turn against a virus that has killed nearly 1.5 million people globally, hammered the world economy and upended normal life for billions since it emerged in Wuhan, China, a year ago.
Other vaccines expected to come on stream soon include ones from Moderna and AstraZeneca/Oxford University, which has strong backing from the UK government.
Many poorer countries are pinning their hopes on the AstraZeneca/Oxford candidate, which can be kept in regular refrigerators and is being offered at cost price. But it is undergoing further data analysis after questions were raised over the effectiveness of its dosage regime.
With effectiveness around 95 percent, both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are based on new mRNA technology, which hacks into human cells to effectively turn them into vaccine-making factories.
