The World Health Organisation on Wednesday appointed a Nigerian professor of virology, Oyewale Tomori into its Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 vaccine composition.

Tomori who is a former vice-chancellor of the Redeemer’s University, Ede, will join the group which consists of an independent experts that will periodically review the evidence.

The group is charged to analyse the implications of emerging variants of concerns on the performance of COVID-19 vaccines.

WHO said, “The group is to make recommendations to WHO on the methods to assess the impact of the variants of concerns on vaccines; provide interpretation of available evidence on the effect of variants of concerns on vaccines, including but not limited to vaccine effectiveness and recommend to WHO, for each COVID-19 vaccine platform, adaptations (if any) needed so that vaccines continue to safely provide WHO-recommended levels of protection against variants of concerns.”

The group includes Dr. Supamit Chunsuttiwat, who is an advisor, Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health Thailand; Cheryl Cohen a professor in epidemiology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; Professor Thomas Fleming, a member of the Scientific Steering Committee for the WHO Solidarity COVID-19 Vaccines Trial.

Other members of the group includes,David Goldblatt, a Professor of Vaccinology and Immunology as well as Dr. Ziad Memish, a Senior Infectious Disease Consultant, among others.