Still positive data and new agreements for production: the charge of anti Covid-19 vaccines is enriched with new results and from the United States to Russia the news on the new steps of research, as well as on the front of commercial agreements for the production of extraordinary quantities of doses that are currently expected to be used to defeat the pandemic. Beware, however, of nationalisms, experts warn from the site of the journal Science, because the vaccine will have to be available to the whole world.
A total of 164 vaccine candidates are being studied, according to the updated list of the World Health Organization (WHO); 25 of these are being tested on humans, five of which on a very large number of people as they have now reached phase 3 of the tests, the most advanced. The important thing is not to finish first, but to arrive early ", said the president of Farmindustria, Massimo Scaccabarozzi.
The data published so far impose caution because they still concern the early stages of tests, as in the case of the vaccine born from the collaboration between the Modern American company with the National Institute for Infectious Diseases (Niaid) of the United States. The results published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicate that in the preclinical phase, that is conducted on animals, the vaccine candidate induced the production of neutralizing antibodies in the macaques, that is, which prevent the virus from attaching to cells to invade them. The ability of the vaccine to protect the respiratory tract and avoid injury to the lungs was also observed. In the meantime, the production and, above all, to ensure a sufficient quantity of doses for the population.
So the British government signed with the French pharmaceutical group Sanofi and the British pharmaceutical group GlaxoSmithKline (Gsk) to supply 60 million doses of the anti-Covid-19 vaccine. For Great Britain it is the fourth such agreement after those with AstraZeneca, Valneva and BioNTech / Pfizer, which allowed the British government to secure a total of 250 million doses.
Russia is also moving forward, where the vaccine that the national research institute Gamaleya is working on has been sent to the Ministry of Health for expert evaluation and its registration is expected to take place between 10 and 12 August , according to the Russian news agency Interfax. CNN sources believe that Russia is aiming to obtain approval for the vaccine on August 10 in order to be the first country in the world to take this step, "despite - the CNN found - concerns about its safety and efficacy", considering that the vaccine candidate has yet to conclude the second phase of clinical trials on August 3 and then begin the third phase. On this scenario, the warning of the researchers, published by Science, against the 'nationalisms of vaccines', which could threaten a fair and global distribution, especially in countries where it could be more necessary, is imposed.
