Brazil is the second most affected country in the world after the United States by coronavirus
Rio de Janeiro:
Brazil may be fighting in its fight against the coronavirus, but it is at the forefront of vaccine development with large-scale trials and the production of millions of doses on the horizon.
COVID-19 is rapidly spreading across the Latin American country – a situation highlighted when President Jair Bolsonaro tested positive on Tuesday – creating the conditions necessary to test the effectiveness of a vaccine.
Brazil, the world‘s leading producer of yellow fever vaccines, is renowned for its expertise in vaccines, which it produces on a large scale in public institutes.
Leaders of two of the most advanced vaccine projects – one from Oxford University, in partnership with AstraZeneca laboratories, and the other from Chinese Sinovac – will conduct phase three tests, the last before the approval of the drug, on thousands of Brazilians. volunteers.
Only three vaccine projects worldwide have reached phase three.
And Brazil will not be outdone either: the two projects have technology transfer agreements that will allow the country to produce the vaccines themselves, if the tests prove conclusive.
With foreclosure measures applied unevenly nationally, Brazil – a country of continental proportions with 212 million people – has failed to contain the pandemic, which has killed 65,000 people in the country.
It is the second most affected country after the United States.
– 100 million doses –
“Brazil is a good testing ground because the virus is still very present and there is a wide variety of epidemiological characteristics” throughout the country, said Margareth Dalcomo, researcher at FIOCRUZ, the research organization which will help produce the Oxford vaccine. AFP.
“The more volunteers are exposed to the virus, the more likely it is to quickly prove the vaccine’s effectiveness,” said Sue Ann Costa Clemens, researcher at the Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP), who is responsible for perform tests for Oxford. project on 5,000 Brazilian volunteers.
“If we manage to recruit these volunteers as the curve continues to increase, we hope to get results soon, as early as November,” added Clemens, also director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Siena, in Italy. .
Phase III testing for the vaccine began in June in Brazil, as well as in the United Kingdom and South Africa
“If the tests are successful, the vaccine could be registered in the UK by the end of the year and in other countries, including Brazil, in early 2021,” added Clemens, noting that the registration in Brazil should be easier and faster due to on-site testing.
Under the agreement with Oxford and AstraZeneca, the Brazilian government will invest $ 127 million to enable FIOCRUZ to acquire the technology and equipment to produce an initial quantity of 30.4 million doses during the phase of experimentation.
If the vaccine passes clinical trials, Brazil will have the right to produce an additional 70 million doses at an estimated cost of $ 2.30 each.
– Political rivalries –
At the same time, the Sao Paulo state government will start testing the vaccine on 9,000 volunteers from the Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac on July 20.
The partnership also provides for the transfer of technology for “large-scale production” if the tests are successful.
“This is a technology that we master perfectly, we have already produced other vaccines in a similar way,” said Dimas Covas, director of the Butantan Institute, in charge of producing the doses.
“We will have the autonomy to meet demand from Brazil, but also from other Latin American countries,” he said.
With the two large-scale trials, “Brazil is the repository of hopes for much of the world,” added Covas.
But the announcement three weeks ago of the partnership with Sinovac drew criticism, as well as questionable conspiracy theories.
This happened in the context of a political rivalry between the governor of Sao Paulo Joao Doria and Bolsonaro, a coronavirus skeptic who announced that he felt “perfectly fine” and had only mild symptoms after having tested positive for COVID-19.
“A Chinese laboratory manufacturing a vaccine against a Chinese virus and research funded by a governor who is a major partner of China. I do not want this vaccine, is it?” tweeted Roberto Jefferson, a former congressman who recently joined the Bolsonaro camp.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
