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Watsupptoday:

WHO's Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) weekly Epidemiological situation Report

October 12, 2020

This week WHO launched an online training course designed for Jordan�s frontline clinicians and nurses managing COVID-19 cases in designated hospitals. The clinical management training will be conducted from 5 to 26 October 2020 and will include a series of 7 virtual sessions over a period of 1 month.

From the field:
Ministries of Health from selected countries in the Region of the Americas begin preparations for the WHO Solidarity clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines.

The Solidarity Clinical Trial was presented to health authorities in the Americas, in a virtual meeting, held on 24 September 2020. The goal of the trial is to coordinate prompt, efficient, and reliable evaluation of candidate SARS-CoV-2 vaccines under development, to assess their safety and efficacy and to identify those that will be appropriate for deployment to influence the course of the pandemic. The six countries participating in the trial are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador and Mexico. PAHO will coordinate the extensive technical, political, and operational issues.

"The work done so far on COVID-19 has demanded efforts for scientists all over the world to stretch our capacity to innovate and collaborate to develop new solutions for the population that we serve," said Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme.

Topics covered included the general framework and characteristics of the Trial, and the selection criteria for participation, which include: a well established ethics committees with the required capacity, a National Regulatory Authority, a functional immunization program with disaggregated information at the subnational level, research centers with experience in vaccine trials, and epidemiological criteria according to the recommendations of the Trial Committee. The epidemiological criteria in the selection of the study sites allows determination of areas in which the incidence of COVID-19 is high, since the study seeks high recruitment rates. However, it is noted that participation in the Solidarity Clinical Trial has no implication on eventual access to the vaccine via COVAX and the PAHO Revolving Fund.