Argentina has been chosen to conduct clinical trials on a joint vaccine project against the new coronavirus carried by the German company BioNTech and the American pharmaceutical laboratory Pfizer, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez announced on Friday. "Argentina is the only country in the region where one of the test phases for a possible Covid-19 vaccine will be carried out , " the head of state wrote on social media.
At the beginning of July, BioNTech and Pfizer had announced positive preliminary results for their joint project of vaccine against the new coronavirus, on 45 participants. According to a statement from the two partners, the BNT162b1 experimental vaccine "is capable of generating a neutralizing antibody response in humans at levels greater than or equal to those observed in convalescent sera - and it does so at relatively low doses" , said Ugur Sahin, managing director of BioNTech. The technology of this vaccine is based on messenger RNA, a genetic code that is inserted into human cells to make it make antibodies specific to the coronavirus.
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In Buenos Aires, the two companies explained on Friday that "the choice of a center in Argentina to carry out these trials was based on several factors, including the scientific experience and the operational capacities of the team of the principal investigator, the epidemiology of the disease, as well as Argentina's past experience in conducting clinical trials . "
Several companies have already published preliminary results indicating that their experimental vaccines trigger an immune response, following the initial phase of their clinical trials, that is to say in humans. Twenty-three projects have started these trials, according to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and several have already gone to the second or even the third phase, which involves injecting the vaccine on thousands or tens of thousands of volunteers in order to see if it actually prevents contamination.
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The vaccine of the American biotech Moderna and that of the British University of Oxford allied with the AstraZeneca laboratory are among the most advanced in large-scale trials, as well as several Chinese projects, in particular that of the company CanSinoBIO which has already obtained the authorization to administer it to soldiers of the Chinese army.
Over 90,000 cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in Argentina, including 1,749 deaths.
