12/14/2020 4:46 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 12/14/2020 4:46 PM
In the world there are dozens of vaccine projects against SARS-CoV-2.
A few
took the lead.
Of these, in recent weeks the results of their phase 3 clinical trials have become known, first through press releases and later, not all, through
scientific publications.
Efficiency figures
above 90 percent for Pfizer and Moderna
were released within a few days of each other.
Now those of the Russian vaccine were added, whose effectiveness is also located above that threshold.
The authorities of that country assured that the results will be published in the scientific journal The Lancet.
Until now, the only vaccines to begin to be supplied were the one from Pfizer, in the United Kingdom and the United States, and the Russian one in Russia.
Pfizer published the details last Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
He confirmed that two doses of his vaccine give 95 percent protection.
The second country to apply the Sputnik-V vaccine would be Argentina
if the ANMAT approves it
and, as announced by President Alberto Fernández, 300,000 doses arrive in the country before the end of the year.
For its part, China approved the emergency use of its candidate vaccines CanSino and Sinovac, approval that also occurred in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Regarding the Oxford vaccine, an error during the procedure prevents us from still having accurate data and part of the trial will have to be repeated.
The representatives of the pharmaceutical AstraZeneca, associated in the investigation with the British University, did not say how long it will take to conclude the phase 3 trial from this inconvenience.
It is the vaccine whose active principle will
be manufactured in Argentina
.
Since that news was known, its availability in the country is anticipated for March or April 2021. It will be produced in the Mabxience laboratory, in Garín, for all of Latin America (except Brazil) and then it will be packaged in a Mexican plant.
Astrazeneca released its provisional results on December 8 in The Lancet and last Friday also confirmed that it would investigate the combination of its vaccine with the Russian Sputnik V, in order to intensify its effectiveness.
At first the company spoke of an efficacy of at least 70 percent and hours later announced the repetition in a larger cohort of part of the study to understand why in a subgroup aged between 18 and 55 years this efficacy increased to 90 percent, after it was revealed that these volunteers were given
a lower dose
and not as part of the plan.
Regarding the Chinese vaccine, the president of Sinopharm, Liu Jingzhen, reported that 56 thousand people who received the coronavirus vaccine as part of the application within the authorization of emergency use and traveled abroad from China were not infected.
Since last June, phase 3 clinical trials of Sinopharm vaccines have been successively organized in more than ten countries and regions such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Peru, Argentina and Morocco.
"Clinical trials are complex processes and I suppose it is not strange that there are incidents that are solved internally without making them public. The difference is that now we are
witnessing their development in real time
, because companies are competing to show their progress as soon as possible possible ", explained the virologist Isabel Sola, from the National Center for Biotechnology of Spain.
And he added: "If we only saw the final results of the trial in the form of publication or approval by the regulators, we would avoid knowing doubtful or inconclusive intermediate situations."
But the urgency of the moment seems that it wants immediate answers and science needs its time to obtain conclusive results.
Clinical, vaccine and drug trials have three phases plus
a fourth review
phase
applicable only when the product already has the approval of regulatory agencies and is on the market.
In this pandemic, times have been shortened.
Development of a vaccine can take 4 to 10 years, depending on prior knowledge.
The key is that never before has so much human and financial resources been concentrated on the same goal.
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