05/26/2021 15:30
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 05/26/2021 3:30 PM
The government closed an agreement to purchase the single-dose vaccine from the Chinese laboratory CanSino.
The head of the Cabinet, Santiago Cafiero, told it on Wednesday morning, and in the announcement it is given
amid doubts
about whether or not that unit dose grants immunity only for six months.
Days ago there was a key meeting between the Ministry of Health of the Nation and authorities of the laboratory that acts as a link, called Pablo Cassará.
As
Clarín
learned
, the signing with the CanSino Biologics laboratory would be finalized "in the next few days" and would involve bringing
between three and four million doses from July.
The ANMAT told this newspaper that there is still no data to disseminate on the process of its approval in the country.
Each of these vaccines has an estimated value of
US $ 14
, at market value.
CanSino, through the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, tested its vaccine in Argentina with a double-blind trial - dose versus placebo, in random and equal samples - and the envelopes that indicate who received the formula and who did not,
would be opened shortly
.
Whoever did not receive it during the study, which gathered 8,000 volunteers, will have priority as soon as the doses arrive in the country.
The vaccine is in the last phase of testing, after having been tested in
78 study centers
.
In addition to our country, it was tested in Russia, Pakistan, Mexico, where it is already applied, and Chile, and shows an efficacy of
65%
in symptomatic patients and 91% for severe cases of coronavirus.
Its technology is that of
inactivated virus
vaccines
.
Technically, Cansino's is defined as "inactivated (vero cells)", as they say from Anmat.
The announced effectiveness would place it at the lowest level among those that are approved in the country.
Cansino's is the third vaccine developed by China, after Sinovac (which is used in Chile) and Sinopharm (which is applied in our country).
The Cansino vaccine, which has already been licensed in China, Mexico, Pakistan and Hungary, requires refrigeration between two and eight degrees Celsius for up to three months, which facilitates the distribution process.
How long your immunity lasts
The Chinese laboratory CanSino reported this Tuesday that it is studying in Mexico a
"probable booster"
for its vaccine, which until now is considered a single dose and which in that country is used to immunize teachers.
The Chinese pharmaceutical company detailed in a statement that it made "an amendment to its protocol" in its phase III studies, which involved more than 45,000 people in "different countries of the world" and 15,000 volunteers in Mexico, where it packages the drug in a plant. from the state of Querétaro.
"It was decided to administer
a second dose to all participants
, and in this way - at the same time - to be able to study the possible benefits that a second booster dose could bring to the vaccine," the company reported.
It is not ruled out that the same thing happens in Argentina.
The company issued the statement after statements by Zhu Tao, CanSino's scientific director, were reported in the Mexican press, in which he warned that the vaccine
loses efficacy after six months.
"However, some participants were mistakenly informed that the efficacy of the vaccine decreases after six months, and that therefore a second dose is necessary," the company said.
So far, Mexico has received more than
4.6 million doses of CanSino out of a total of 35 million purchased
.
3 million doses have already been applied to educational personnel.
In this context, CanSino reiterated in its statement that its vaccine is "safe and effective", but that "like many other types of vaccines, such as influenza, it may require the application of a booster dose."
"Until now the exact time to apply a booster is not known. We are investigating it and we will inform it as soon as we have the necessary data," the laboratory said.
Mexico has supplied a total of 26.9 million vaccines of various drugs in a country of 126 million people.
$
Look also
Coronavirus: in the Province they do not require a medical certificate for children under 60 to be vaccinated
One by one: how many vaccines against the coronavirus of this new batch will each Province receive