A vaccine against Covid-19 may be ready by year-end, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, without elaborating.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, addressing the end of a two-day meeting of its Executive Board on the pandemic, said: "We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we may have a vaccine. There is hope."

Nine experimental vaccines are in the pipeline of the WHO-led COVAX global vaccine facility that aims to distribute 2 billion doses by the end of 20