A nurse applies a Sinovac vaccine in Santiago de Chile.Alberto Valdés / EFE
The latest vaccine that Mexico has added to its portfolio has arrived without making much noise and in an unexpected way.
The names AstraZeneca, Pfizer, CanSino and Sputnik V have been on the press radar for months, but since last week there has been increasing talk of the Sinovac option, given the unforeseen events that have affected the worldwide flow of doses and a pandemic that has already left almost two million confirmed infections in the country.
An intention to purchase contract between the pharmaceutical company and the Mexican authorities contemplates the arrival of 10 million doses, says Martha Delgado, undersecretary of Multilateral Affairs, in an interview.
The Chinese vaccine, with a first shipment to the country of 200,000 doses scheduled for the end of February, has found a
sherpa
equally unsuspected on its way to Latin America: the government of Sebastián Piñera in Chile, which in recent days has been in talks to share its regulatory file with five other countries in the region.
Sinovac, which goes by the trade name Coronavac, has apparently been the vaccine with the shortest route to Mexico.
"We have a new vaccine on the horizon, which is the Sinovac vaccine," Hugo López-Gatell, the Mexican spokesman for the pandemic, said just on February 5.
The undersecretary of Health added that the drug had had clinical trials in Brazil and Chile.
In the Andean country it was approved for emergency use on January 20.
López-Gatell mentioned in that press conference, almost in passing, that he was already in contact with the Chilean regulator to analyze the technical file.
A day later, the Secretary of Foreign Relations, Marcelo Ebrard, published on Twitter the basis of the agreement: Chile would share its experience with Sinovac and Mexico would share its experience with Sputnik V, approved that same week in the country.
The Russian vaccine was added to the Mexican portfolio just this year through the Mexico City-Buenos Aires-Moscow axis, with Argentina acting as an intermediary.
Days later it was sought to replicate the formula, now with other protagonists: Mexico-Santiago-Peking.
Last month, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had two calls with the Chinese ambassador.
"The pre-purchase contract was signed this year," says Delgado, "the same file was used as in Chile."
The information-sharing pact was forged in January, in a series of talks by the Pacific Alliance, a multilateral initiative between Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia.
"We have been very concerned about having a coordinated and regional position in the face of situations that could affect us, such as the export restrictions of the European Union, since we all have contracts with Pfizer," says Rodrigo Yáñez, undersecretary of International Economic Relations of the Foreign Ministry Chilean.
The World Health Organization (WHO) stated this week that more than three-quarters of the 128 million vaccines administered worldwide are concentrated in 10 countries, which represent 60% of global GDP.
"It has been very complex to face this drought of arrival of vaccines", admits Delgado, who attributes the shortage to the production problems of the laboratories and a "phenomenon of hoarding".
At that conference on February 5, López-Gatell was forced to acknowledge that three weeks had passed without a single dose of Pfizer arriving and only last Monday, Ebrard announced that Europe had granted a vaccine export permit to Mexico for the first shipment in a month to arrive from Belgium.
In parallel, supply problems were being turned around and by last Wednesday, the López Obrador government announced that the Coronavac had been authorized to be applied in the country.
Backstage, less than five days passed between announcement and approval.
“What looks very fast is not really fast,” Delgado clarifies, “we have explored vaccines from 18 to 20 different laboratories since June 2020, but the approval process has taken all these months”.
Chile was openly interested since the middle of last year in the Sinovac prototype, which was then probing various parts of the world to carry out its clinical tests: Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey were chosen.
Chile, with a population of about 19 million inhabitants, was perhaps not a very attractive market for many pharmaceutical companies and, similarly to Mexico, since it did not have a scientific infrastructure that would allow it to urgently develop its own vaccine, it opted to offer volunteers to gain access to the first doses.
At least 400 out of 40,000 participants in phase 3 were Chilean, with direct participation from the (private) Catholic University as the organizer of the clinical trials.
Sinovac's clinical trials have had setbacks, as was the case with other vaccines.
The main controversy has been the different effectiveness results in each country.
In Turkey, preliminary data gave it a 91.25% efficiency.
In Indonesia, on the other hand, only 65.3%.
In Brazil, they first reported a 78% effectiveness, but last January that percentage dropped to 50.4% after including the data of more participants, just above the 50% required by the WHO for vaccines against the coronavirus.
In November, the trials were suspended after a Brazilian participant died, although it was later determined that the death was not related to the vaccine.
"My main concern is effectiveness," says Roselyn Lemus-Martin, PhD in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Oxford, "it's on the edge."
Of all the leaders in the vaccine race, the Coronavac is the one that uses the most traditional technology, explains Lemus-Martin.
It is an inactivated virus vaccine, similar to the one that was developed in the past against polio or hepatitis A. In this case, the developers injected the coronavirus into monkey kidney cells and treated it with chemicals to stop it replicating.
These inactive viruses are inoculated to the patient so that he begins to generate antibodies against covid-19.
You need two applications.
Although many people are fearful of being "injected with the virus", it is a vaccine like "those of a lifetime," says Lemus-Martin.
"The world is turning to China because it has cheap vaccines, they are easily transported and they have the capacity to mass-produce them," adds the specialist.
Sinovac, the fifth vaccine approved in Mexico, plans to have 300 million doses manufactured by the end of the year in a new plant in China.
Yáñez says that confidentiality agreements prevent him from disclosing the price, although he assures that it is "competitive" and according to the average suggested by the Covax mechanism of around $ 11 per dose: more expensive than AstraZeneca's, but cheaper than that of Pfizer.
The fact that it was a “traditional” vaccine was not a problem for the Piñera government, on the contrary.
In an unprecedented moment of developing prototypes against the clock, Chile was looking for certainties.
Following a visit to Beijing by Chilean officials in November, the government agreed to purchase 10 million doses for this year, with preferential supply as it is one of the first to trust Sinovac.
At a time marked by shortages, Chile has emerged as an example of successful vaccination in the region.
“Today we exceed a million people vaccinated.
We have a million reasons, most of them older adults, to be happy, ”Piñera wrote on Twitter last Tuesday.
The country has 35 million doses insured through deals with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Sinovac.
Yáñez points out that the agreement with the Chinese vaccine is multi-year and that he expects to receive up to 60 million doses in three years.
"We are convinced that it will be an endemic disease and that we will need vaccines for several years," he says.
It's a seemingly safe bet in the face of global access problems, but somewhat risky in the face of the emergence of variants of the virus, for example, says Lemus-Martin.
China's efficiency and supply problems have been the target of criticism in the West.
The powers have not abandoned the geopolitical, economic and scientific competition of the vaccine.
Latin America watches the contest from the outside, without much interest in entering into ideological debates.
"We have agreements in all latitudes," says Delgado.
"It is not that Mexico turned to China, they are not new relationships," he adds, "a solidarity diplomacy and not so ideological can give you these possibilities."
Delgado says the CanSino vaccine, which was also approved this week and which shipped a first shipment of two million bulk doses, may become the basis of an agreement similar to the one reached with AstraZeneca in August to ship packaged doses. in Mexico to other countries in the region.
Similarly, Mexico is testing three other Chinese vaccines, says the official.
The Piñera government, a right-wing politician, has no problem making deals with the Asian giant, which is ultimately its main trading partner.
Nor in sharing his file with the López Obrador government, apparently at another point on the political spectrum.
"The pandemic is a global, regional challenge and in that regard, political colors have to be put aside, the same with vaccines," says Yáñez.
Chile is interested in Sputnik V to continue with the flow of vaccines and avoid unforeseen events: "The president has asked us to think of alternative plans and to always have them available if necessary."
It was not contemplated that a Mexican delegation traveled to Santiago, the exchanges were electronic.
The
Chilean
dossier
is in talks to reach Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay and Guyana.
In the case of Mexico, according to the Foreign Ministry, it is expected that around 1.8 million additional doses will be received in March, which are in preparation.
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