one by one, those who are in the home stretch of the investigation and where they have been approved

Around the world, there are dozens of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination projects. A few they took the lead. Of these, in recent weeks, the results of their Phase 3 clinical trials have become known, first through press releases and later, not all, through Scientific publications.

Efficiency figures above 90 percent of Pfizer and Moderna they met a few days apart. Now those for the Russian vaccine have been added, the effectiveness of which is also above this threshold. The authorities of this country assured that the results would be published in the scientific journal The Lancet.

So far, the only vaccines to start being supplied have been that of Pfizer, in the UK and the US, and that of Russia in Russia. Pfizer published the details in the New England Journal of Medicine last Thursday. He has confirmed that two doses of his vaccine provide 95% protection.

Argentina reportedly one of the first countries to apply the Sputnik-V vaccine if the ANMAT approves it and, as President Alberto Fernández announced, 300,000 doses are arriving in the country before the end of the year. For its part, China has approved the emergency use of its candidate vaccines CanSino and Sinovac, approval which has also taken place in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Regarding the Oxford vaccine, an error in the procedure prevents us from having precise data and part of the test will have to be repeated. Representatives of the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, a research partner of the UK University, did not say how long it will take to conclude the phase 3 trial because of this inconvenience.

It is the vaccine whose active ingredient will be made in Argentina. This news being known, its availability in the country is scheduled for March or April 2021. It will be produced in the Mabxience laboratory, in Garín, for all of Latin America (except Brazil) then it will be packaged in a Mexican factory.

Astrazeneca published its provisional results on December 8 in The Lancet and also confirmed last Friday that it will study the association of its vaccine with Russian Sputnik V, in order to intensify its effectiveness.

At first, the company cited an efficiency of at least 70% and hours later announced the repetition in a larger cohort of part of the study to understand why in a subgroup aged between 18 and 55 years this efficiency has increased. to 90%, after it was revealed that these volunteers were administered by a lower dose and not as part of the plan.

Regarding the Chinese vaccine, Sinopharm Chairman Liu Jingzhen reported that 56,000 people who received the coronavirus vaccine as part of the emergency use authorization application and traveled abroad from China were not infected. Since last June, phase 3 clinical trials of Sinopharm vaccines have been successively organized in more than ten countries and regions such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Peru, Argentina and Morocco.

“Clinical trials are complex processes and I guess it’s not strange that there are incidents that are resolved internally without making them public. The difference is that now we are support its development in real time, because companies are competing to show their progress as quickly as possible, ”explained virologist Isabel Sola, from the National Biotechnology Center of Spain. of the regulators we would avoid experiencing doubtful or inconclusive intermediate situations “.

But the urgency of the moment seems to require immediate answers and science needs its time to obtain conclusive results. Clinical, vaccine and drug trials have three additional phases a quarterly review Applicable only when the product has already been approved by regulatory bodies and is on the market.

In this pandemic, times have been shortened. The development of a vaccine can take 4 to 10 years, depending on prior knowledge. The key is that never before have so many human and financial resources been focused on the same goal.

PS