The new technology used by the American companies, the information about the experimenters and the cause of the delay of the "Oxford vaccine" • And also: Will there be accessible medical information about the Russian vaccine?
• Following the recent twists and turns in medical research, "Israel Today" with all the burning questions
The new technology of the Pfizer and Modern companies that force them to preserve the vaccines against Corona in extreme cold, the gaps between the effectiveness of vaccines and the lack of information about the Russian vaccine.
Israel Today examined all the interesting questions following the new twists and turns in medical research.
Netanyahu: "We will be one of the first countries to receive the modern vaccine" // Photo Archive: GPO
Professor Daniel Shepshalovich is the Deputy Director of the Corona Department at Ichilov Hospital, who is involved in vaccine research and has published major studies in the field.
Regarding recent developments in the corona vaccine race, Shapashlovitch explained that "both the Russians and the Ness Ziona Biological Institute are working with the conventional method of producing vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna have used a modern method that has been talked about for a long time. The method is called MRNA and now it has become operational."
He said, "In the past, vaccines were usually built on injecting a dead virus into the body or injecting an attenuated virus. In this way, the body learns the virus and knows how to respond to the strong or live virus. This is the ancient, accepted method.
"Within this method there is another practice, used by both the Russians and the Biological Institute, which is to take part of the corona virus and implant it in a harmless virus. This is how the body fights this harmless virus and learns on the way the identification and fighting in the corona. It is a slow process. "It's a weak engineered virus. That's why it took a long time to produce vaccines in the past."
So how did the Russians already distribute "Sputnik 5"?
"The Russians just skipped all the safety steps required in the West. The rules that the West has been following for decades and whoever leads their test is the US FDA, establish a long process of vaccinations and tests. That means it is not enough to have a weakened virus or sections of the virus. "You put in another virus. You examine in depth the effects of it on the body, you see over time whether it has any damage, what side effects and only after such a regulated process that takes a very long time, the vaccine is approved," the researcher clarifies.
He said, "The Russians created a vaccine with a virus that has corona characteristics, but it is more attenuated and did not check at all whether it is a vaccine that is beneficial, whether it harms a person, what are its side effects. The Russians skipped all that and started vaccinating."
"If there was a big epidemic that kills a lot of people, then the Russian move would have been understood. You have the option of vaccinating and you are running straight ahead. But as for the corona, the situation is not that bad at all, so I personally would not take the Russian vaccine, but "We are waiting for vaccinations from Western companies, which are testing themselves and undergoing very strict controls."
With regard to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to nevertheless consider the purchase of the Russian vaccine, Prof. Shpeshlovitz noted that he does not know what the basis for this decision is and what the Prime Minister knows about the vaccine beyond the scientific world.
"I heard the announcement and I do not know on what basis it was received, it is important to say that the Russian vaccine may be good, I do not say no, but the West has simply no information about it. No studies have been published, no results have been published, the Russians keep all information to themselves. "On what is the prime minister based on the possibility of buying the Russian vaccine? The intelligence may know something, but scientifically there is no information in the field at all."
The new technology of Pfizer and Modern
Regarding the vaccines of the companies Pfizer and Moderna, Prof. Shepashlowitz said that "what they are doing here is not injecting an attenuated virus into the body at all, but taking the MRNA which is a messenger of the virus that enters the cell and produces proteins for the virus or instructions for the cell to make more copies of this virus. "That means taking a section of the virus here that the body can easily fight."
Documentation: Vaccine production chain // Photo: Pfizer
"After the body itself produces proteins for the virus, it learns to recognize the virus and kill it," explained Shepashlowitz, "that is, if in the old method a weak or killed virus was introduced into the body and it took time to develop, here we insert an independent section that does not produce the virus." "And I'm learning to identify it as a problem. Of course, this is a new method that has been talked about for many years as a very safe method of fighting diseases and has now been used. Of course, this is a completely new method."
Why is there a difference in the level of cooling between the companies?
"Because they are actually using a partial biological material, ie not something living but a decomposed biological material, such a material tends to decompose at room temperature. Therefore it should be wrapped and kept in a special wrapper and refrigerated. Here it turns out that there is a difference between the wrapper "Of course, even minus 20 degrees is really cold, but it is a process that can be handled more in terms of distribution around the country, because refrigerators of minus 70 degrees are somewhat more difficult to operate and require heavier logistical preparations."
A ministerial committee will set the priority for vaccination
Regarding the arrival of the vaccine in Israel and its distribution to the entire population, we contacted Prof. Ronit Calderon Margalit from the Hebrew University School of Public Health to understand how the process will work. According to Prof. Calderon, there is an orderly process in the Ministry of Health and she was surprised by the Ministerial Committee.
"There are two bodies in the Ministry of Health that evaluate the effectiveness of the vaccine against its side effects, as well as the groups in the population for which it is certainly safe. Then they decide on the order of the vaccine. I will explain it this way. Pfizer's vaccine is not necessarily for older people. Severely in Corona.We do not have such data at the moment from the company.So we will have to consider first what age range and what kind of people in general this vaccine is safe for them.
"On the other hand, a modern company has announced that it has tested the vaccine on very older experimenters and people who may be seriously ill with the disease. Therefore, there is a larger range of people who can be vaccinated. Like the FDA, which sets rules for vaccine safety in the United States. "We have committees that examine the dangers versus the benefits of the vaccine based on information. Here there is an orderly committee that usually sets its own priorities."
Dr. Calderon Margalit added that “this is how it has been to this day.
This time I hear that a ministerial committee has been set up and I do not know why it was needed, but in principle it seems that at least in the United States they have decided that first the medical staffs will be vaccinated and then people who are at risk but the virus will not harm them.
That is a very important point. "
The Prime Minister talked about the Russian vaccine too? Is there any new information about him?
"Personally, I do not know about such information. But you should know that there is a department in the country that evaluates vaccines from around the world and receives information all the time. I also know that the Russians not only store but after and in parallel with the vaccine itself, they are in test phase 3. Effective and how much it has side effects.
"Therefore, there may be new information that has not yet been published about the effectiveness of the Russian vaccine or its properties. I assume that eventually the West will be able to determine the nature of this vaccine and that Western and Israeli officials will know whether it is good or not and whether it should be used. "We will know more in time and we may already know something. Therefore, the prime minister left this option open."
Why have Pfizer and Moderna already developed a vaccine while Astra-Zenka from Oxford is lagging behind?
"The answer to this, paradoxically, stems from the intensity of the outbreak of the corona plague in the United States versus the outbreak in the UK. How is a vaccine tested? It is tested against sick people, whether the vaccine protects yes or no. Right now in the United States there is such a huge outbreak of plague. And more broadly to test the effectiveness of the vaccine against a control group and therefore both Modern and Pfizer could test their control group against the vaccine group at the level of 90 people or 95 people who were ill or not.
"To confirm a vaccine - it should be tested on a group of 160 people who received the vaccine versus 160 who did not receive it and see that it prevents the infection and therefore both Pfizer and Modern have so far published only intermediate results."
The professor explained that "there are fewer patients in the UK so the Oxford and AstraZenica research team is working slower. Not because it is less good, but simply because there are fewer vaccine group candidates and a critique that compares whether they are sick or not. But in the UK outbreak, which is also relatively "Pretty high, I guess AstraZenica will also publish results soon. All in all, this is also a company that has a lot of experience in the field."
In summing up her remarks, Prof. Calderon said that "people do not understand the magnitude of the achievement at all. A global epidemic is raging and we find a cure and vaccine for it in just one year. It is a real dream, in the world it was never possible to imagine such a situation. "The vaccine will arrive in Israel, but in relation to the scientific world, it has simply created a truly amazing precedent here."