The vaccine, an unprecedented achievement for Spain

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, right in the image, during a visit in April at the Spanish pharmaceutical multinational HIPRA, in Amer (Girona). Fernando Calvo / POOL

The development of the vaccine against covid-19 by BioNTech and Pfizer, the most common in Europe, has involved an investment of more than 1.7 billion euros.

The arrival at the goal of clinical trials in humans of the Spanish proposal of the company Hipra does not reach 10% of that figure, with a public contribution of 11 million euros.

More information

• This is how the Spanish Hipra vaccine will be tested: it already has the volunteers of the first phase and in the second it will admit inoculated

Coming to the trial with people after obtaining good results in the previous phases, which suggest that it will have optimal levels of safety and efficacy, if nothing goes wrong, is an unprecedented achievement for Spain within the framework of this enormous global challenge.

Dozens of nations have embarked on a similar path and have yet to see the goal in sight.

This success has been achieved in less than 24 months - the development of a vaccine in pre-pandemic times took an average of 10 years - by a private company specialized in animal health that, given the advance of the coronavirus, believed that it could contribute something.

Public collaboration has also been crucial to consolidate this initiative.

In this way, with a minimum budget and maximum will, Hipra has managed to place itself in the race to provide solutions to the greatest health crisis experienced by humanity in a century. And there are still Spanish projects that could start to pay off next year. Those responsible for one of the vaccines developed by the CSIC hope to obtain permission for trials with people shortly and the rest of the initiatives continue without pause with the intention of joining this process as of 2022.

Despite Spain having achieved complete immunization of almost 70% of the population, the threats of the delta variant and those that may arise, the possible need for booster doses and the lack of immunization of much of the planet make the Spanish proposals in timely and necessary. The pandemic is not over and vaccines will continue to be essential for a long time to come.