Mexico will test the Chinese vaccine against covid-19 in more than 10,000 volunteers

Ebrard, last week in Mexico, Presidency of Mexico / EFE

Mexico rides the second wave of massive COVID-19 infections while waiting for vaccines to alleviate its collapsed health system.

This Tuesday, the Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, reported that the country will participate in phase 3 of clinical trials of the Chinese company CanSino's vaccine, which has been the subject of controversy for weeks due to doubts about its effectiveness.

Ebrard has said that the first doses of the vaccine arrived in the country on Friday and between 10,000 and 15,000 volunteers from 12 states will be tested.

Other countries like Chile, Argentina, Pakistan also participate in the trials.

Beyond its effectiveness, the CanSino vaccine is one of the most advanced, along with the one developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, the giant Johnson & Johnson, or the team made up of Pfizer and BioNtech.

In fact, China already approved it for exclusive military use on June 25.

The CanSino scientists altered the genes of a common virus, a strain of the adenovirus.

The idea is that the vaccine elicits an immune system response that protects the patient from the coronavirus.

The problem points to the strain that the researchers from the Chinese firm took as a basis.

It is Ad5, the virus that causes common colds.

A good part of the population has antibodies to fight against this adenovirus, the fear is that the antibodies of the patients will destroy the vaccine.

In an interview with

, Zhu Tao, one of those responsible for the vaccine, asked that the opinion of the experts not be followed "blindly".

In any case, the CanSino trials in Mexico open the collaboration between both parties.

A few months ago, the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed an agreement with the company for the acquisition of 35 million doses.

Ebrard has not said when the third phase of the trials will end and how long it would take until the vaccine was distributed.

He has only explained that there will be "cuts" in the trials, at 14, 28 and 120 days after applying the vaccine.

The agreement with the Chinese company is just one of those that the Government has signed to contain the transmission of the virus.

The Executive has integrated Mexico into the Covax initiative, sponsored by the World Health Organization, through which the country will have access to 25 million doses of different vaccines - currently there are more than fifty in development.

Mexico also has agreements with the team that make up AstraZeneca and Oxford, as well as with Pfizer.

The intention is to cover more than 100 million inhabitants throughout 2021. In the case of AstraZeneca, Mexico and the Slim Foundation will collaborate to elaborate the doses of Latin America from the North American country and Argentina.

The doubt now points to the clinical trials of the most advanced projects, such as AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson.

Both vaccines are in phase 3, after two setbacks in the processes, which had to be stopped.

In the case of AstraZeneca, two of the volunteers who took part in the trials this summer developed neurological diseases: they suffered from inflammation of the spinal cord.

In the case of Johnson & Johnson, it was a single case and the company did not provide many details.

At the end of October, the processes continued after the companies assured that the diseases of the volunteers were not related to the vaccines.

Mexico awaits the end of the trials, the approval of the vaccines and the start of production and distribution.

According to the authorities, this could start in December of this year.