71st report: WHO TRS N°1028: 2020

Overview

The seventy-first meeting of the WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization was held from 24 to 28 August 2020 by WebEx video conferencing due to the restrictions imposed during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

This exceptional meeting was held prior to the annual October meeting of the Committee with an emphasis placed on addressing a number of urgent biological standardization issues relating to COVID 19. The meeting was opened on behalf of the Director-General of WHO by Dr Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, Assistant Director-General, Access to Medicines and Health Products. Dr Simão welcomed the Committee, meeting participants and observers. Referring to the protracted nature of the COVID-19 crisis, she expressed the hope that recent technological advances would help to reduce mortality and more generally the societal impact of the pandemic. She highlighted the urgency of the current meeting and outlined the ways in which the work of the Committee related to the WHO Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator. The ACT-Accelerator aims to bring together governments, scientists, businesses, civil society, philanthropists and global health organizations to speed up efforts to end the pandemic.