Director of the Biological Institute told the government that the institute could reach a vaccine in a few months • Against this background, the institute received a budget addition of tens of millions of shekels • Senior sources reveal: This is a misrepresentation and the way to vaccination is far away • "Wasted time is wasted due to lack of promises"

• "Important days were wasted until they realized the severity of the epidemic." A government meeting on the Corona

  Photo:

  Fresh Life / GPO

This week, the director of the Biological Institute at Ness Ziona announced to the PM about progress in the development of the vaccine against the corona. "Significant progress has been made in pre-vaccination planning and we are now preparing for a model for the animal experiment," Prof. Shmuel Shapira declared.

This dull message has received optimistic headlines, but in practice it does reveal a failure, seemingly, big and worrying. About two months ago, as the crisis began, the director of the government promised that he could deliver a vaccine at a record speed of a few months, in exchange for a huge budget. However, even his current statement indicates that it was a baseless pretense. The institute is still in the theoretical stage, and even preliminary animal experiments have not yet begun, followed by another long series of experiments in humans, followed by another process of certification, all at the most optimistic assumptions and before the production question. The few months promised to the government are beginning to run out, and by this time the world is already in much more advanced stages. Why did the Institute commit to an ambitious schedule? To what extent is he an expert in such developments? And does he even have a chance of getting ahead of the pharmaceutical giant in the world?

Had it not been for the Corona eruption, the Ness Ziona Institute would probably be approaching bankruptcy this year. About a year ago, we published in this supplement that the institute's condition is deteriorating and the economic difficulties manifest a steady decline in its output and scientific capabilities. According to senior sources at the institute, the Ministry of Defense does not receive the produce it wants and for which it pays hundreds of millions, and the combination of scientific decay with many management-defined management has also damaged the institute's collaborations with other security agencies and industry.

Responsible for the institute on behalf of the Ministry of Defense is the Defense Minister's Advisor on Defense and the Chief of Special Operations Division, Brigadier General Moshe Edri. Edri has taken the initiative and established a professional expert committee to help guide the institute in more practical and effective directions for the state. The committee sat with senior medical professionals Senior Security.

The work of the committee was thorough and comprehensive. She examined all aspects of the Institute's work and met representatives from all areas. The main conclusion reached was that the vaccine unit should be closed down, and the institute should offer other directions to the relevant biology teams.

These conclusions were known to both the Ministry of Defense and the Institute's management. The report has not yet been officially submitted, but as Haim Levinson published in the Haaretz newspaper, the Biological Institute has already been instructed to start implementing these changes. This has caused a major crisis between the institute's director, Shapiro and his staff, and Edri's office. Eventually, we learned from officials at the institute that Fira straightened out and demanded that biologists find a different direction.

No direction and no breakthrough

On February 2, shortly after the Corona virus appeared in Israel, a first government meeting on the plague took place in Jerusalem. At the meeting, relevant government ministers, the head of the NSC, and heads of various institutions, including Prof. Shapiro, were present. Following the meeting, along with statements about reducing bureaucracy and budget allocation, Netanyahu declared a particularly ambitious venture: "Israel has advanced the world in many ways, even in dealing with this issue, And we intend to advance further - I instructed the Biological Institute and the Ministry of Health to create a vaccine for the virus as well as set up a vaccine factory. "

"If that's true - it's an injury to the public, ostensibly." The Ness Ziona Institute // Photo: Jonathan Shaul

The decision to impose the vaccine's mission and perhaps even its production on the biological institute was, according to sources, lacking a professional basis and made against the hiding of critical information from the USSR, but its effect was dramatic. Shapira experienced euphoria. He returned to the institute with the gospel of Netanyahu, Based on that meeting, he decided to immediately transfer NIS 100 million to develop and produce a vaccine, "I saved the institute," he said, the next step being large-scale equipment orders at the expense of planned revenue.

But almost every expert on the subject states that the promise of creating a fast and breakthrough vaccine that will be available to the population within a few months is devoid of coverage and the optimistic scenario is a procedure that will take at least a year. Global pharmaceutical companies and giants, with expertise in the field, are already working hard to develop a vaccine and the chance that the Ness Ziona Institute, on the 50 people assigned to the mission, will be able to compete is an illusion.

"Anyone who thinks a small group of researchers, without much experience in developing these kinds of vaccines, can compete with the billions of dollars spent today on vaccine development in tens of thousands of researchers with tens and hundreds of huge vaccine research, development and production centers - live in the movie," the vaccine market expert tells us. . "The State of Israel will buy the vaccine abroad, and it will come faster, quality and cheaper than the biological institute can ever do. This is not a claim against the Institute and its people, it is the reality. "

"The impression I got is that they have no particular direction or breakthrough in the world," a senior civil service scientist tells us. "The institute's director said there would be a vaccine within a few months, anyone who is even a bit close to the field knows it's not real. It's a complex and lengthy process of research, Trials and certifications. This is a lack of professionalism or deception. It should also be borne in mind that the Institute has gone into this matter for months. It is a false maxim. "

It should be added here that according to publications, the Institute's experience in vaccines is not great: in the 1950s, he dealt with polio virus, and in the early 2000s, for eight years, he developed anthrax vaccine.

"The truth is that the institute cannot compete with developing such vaccines," a senior source at the institute tells us. "There are good researchers here, and we have something to contribute to the war in Corona. But that is wasted in an optimal way. With Avigdor (the former director of the institute, Dr. Avigdor Sheferman) it was a different story. From a scientific point of view, he was an expert in the field and we were much better in terms of the Institute's capabilities. Today the situation is reversed. "

These claims are valid in the conclusions of the professional committee that accompanied the Institute and examined its functioning, and decided that the vaccine unit should be closed. The decision to close a unit is rare and sometimes - along with other possible reasons - indicates significant failures in its ability to provide effective solutions to the State of Israel against virus challenges.

In light of these, the question of what happened at the Feb. 2 meeting becomes dramatic. Why, in an emergency, did the State of Israel decide to allocate tremendous and important resources to a project that experts believe is futile?

"It's about professionalism or deception." Prof. Shapiro // Photo: Meir Azulai

Prof. Shapiro practices the Institute as a place of excellence and breakthrough. Although he is not a biologist in his training but an anesthesiologist, he used his status and made the prime minister believe, contrary to any scientific and medical logic, that the institute could produce a vaccine for the population in just a few months. All that is needed, he argued, is a big addition to the budget. "M - Who wouldn't be happy for such a solution? And Shapiro returned with a promise of big money.

Apparently, we know - and in the Prime Minister's Office and the Defense Ministry do not deny it - that Fira did not update the PM with vital and relevant information in his decision to allocate nearly NIS 100 million to him. He did not comment on the difficult committee conclusions, which deal directly with the vaccine unit. He did not disclose the budgetary difficulties that the Institute was facing under its management. He did not comment on the Ministry of Defense's audit of the Institute's functioning. And, as mentioned, he made a misrepresentation about the true duration of reaching a viable population vaccine.

Is it really a matter of concealing essential and vital information in order to make such a significant decision, and more so in a health and economic crisis? If it became clear to a state that a private company was supposedly hiding from the state such material information for the purpose of winning large budgets, would it be called for a police investigation quickly?

"If described in a proper investigation, it is allegedly a classic offense of fraud and breach of trust," says a lawyer with whom we consulted. "The offense of the offense is a public offense by a civil servant, and apparently in this case there is a serious injury."

"Shapiro felt like he won"

Various factors indicate that if Shapiro, as the professional, says that there is no usable vaccine and will not be soon, there is reason to assume that the government's decisions following that meeting were sharper. "Very important days were wasted until they realized the severity of the epidemic," a senior source told Israel Today. "Social remoteness had to be taken earlier." Could it be that some delay was due to Shapiro's belief that the Biological Institute would solve the problem in no time?

At this point one should ask where Brigadier General Adri, who was in charge of Shapiro and who initiated the test committee that identified the vaccine unit's problems. Sources with whom we spoke say that Shapiro bypassed Edri and came to the meeting independently. Edri, we suggest, was furious and did not attend the same meeting. If this is true, the Defense Ministry institute is wrong here. It was his duty to ensure that the USSR and other senior officials do not make astronomical costs based on partial and incorrect information, on a matter that is his direct responsibility.

The Ministry of Defense refused to answer questions and responded in general that the biological institute was "excellent", although it itself formed the expert committee to examine the future of the institute due to severe functional and management failures. Behind the scenes, sources we spoke to reported that Shapiro felt for weeks as "defeating" Eddie. "He did a school for him," say the institute's associates. "He went directly to the prime minister and made a decision, and now Eddie has to bury deeply the professional opinion he has invited. Shapiro is also right in saying that Adri has fallen asleep keeping watch over the plague.

When Edrey himself was required to address the conclusions of the committee, he was hung by the fact that no formal submissions had yet been made. But the institute's work plans have already assimilated the conclusions, and so, once the idea of ​​budgeting with a single capital that he had discounted for professional reasons, Eddie had to be there and provide the full picture to the prime minister. His conduct on the matter also surprised some of his associates, who describe him as a responsible person "The office and the committee were professional and interested," says a former senior official of the system, "but since Shapiro sold Netanyahu drug idols differently."

Another source in the defense establishment concludes: "Shapiro managed to take advantage of the Corona's distress to get a lot of public money to cover his failures as a manager. Instead of helping us with many important things that are needed now, the Institute is wasting resources." Since that meeting, the USSR seemed to understand the mistake and in early March, sitting in the Sheba hospital, changed its guidance and instructed the Institute to "help the world's leading parties to quickly develop vaccine and antibody." Accordingly, an official of the Prime Minister's Office has approved us, the institute will do so from the existing budget, with no additions.

Another turn of ours took another turn. "More than 50 scientists are currently working on the research and development of the medical response to the virus," the Defense Ministry said. "For the research and development efforts, the Institute received a dedicated budget from the Treasury, which is earmarked for the first phase of the process." We know that it is tens of millions of shekels.

The Ministry of Defense said: "The institute, led by Prof. Shmuel Shapiro, is a world-renowned research and development body that draws on researchers and scientists with experience, extensive knowledge and high quality infrastructure. Today, more than 50 experienced scientists are working on research and development of the medical response. "This is a group of the world's leading in terms of knowledge and biological research."

As far as the production of the vaccine and antibodies against the corona virus is concerned, the institute in its work relies on unique knowledge centers he has developed, in light of his professional abilities over the years. "