WHO-approved COVID vaccines
according to the last WHO update (May 19, 2022) These are the vaccines approved for emergency use:
In December 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) added the Comirnaty messenger RNA (nRNA) vaccine against COVID-19 from Pfizer/BioNTech to its emergency use list, making it the first vaccine to receive validation for emergency use from the WHO since the outbreak began.
Pfizer’s vaccine features mRNA technology, which is essentially a small piece of code (virus) that the vaccine delivers to your cells. The code serves as an instruction manual for your immune system, teaching it to recognize the virus that causes covid-19 and attack it if it encounters it.
Pfizer’s vaccination schedule consists of two minimum doses to combat the virus.
The WHO approved on February 15, 2021 two versions of the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, giving the green light for these vaccines to be implemented globally through the COVAX mechanism.
The vaccines are produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio in South Korea and the Serum Institute in India.
“Although both companies are producing the same vaccine, because they are manufactured in different production plants, they required separate reviews and approvals,” said the agency’s director, Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine relies on the virus’s genetic instructions to build the spike protein. But unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which store instructions in single-stranded RNA, the Oxford vaccine uses double-stranded DNA.
AstraZeneca’s vaccination schedule is two doses.