Brazil has authorized clinical trial of potential new vaccine against COVID-19: it will be the sixth to be developed in the country

Brazil, one of the countries most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, on Monday authorized the clinical trials of a potential new vaccine against COVID-19. Its acronym is SCB-2019 and it is funded by Chinese company Sichuan Clover Biopharmaceuticals.

The National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) said in a statement that the country will carry out the third and final stage of antigen screening, the sixth to be tested in Brazil since the start of the global health emergency.

Sichuan Clover vaccine is produced from a combination of proteins with synthetic adjuvants that are used to enhance the body’s immune response.

The inoculant should be administered in two doses with an interval of 22 days between them. and it will be tested in approximately 12,100 Brazilians aged 18 or over, who will be distributed in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Rio Grande do Norte and Rio de Janeiro.

Globally, trials are expected to include 22,000 volunteers. In addition to those who live in Brazil, there will be citizens of other Latin American countries, South Africa, Belgium, China, Spain, Poland and United Kingdom.

To grant its approval, the regulatory agency analyzed data from previous stages of the studies, including preliminary results from clinical trials already underway.

“The results obtained to date have demonstrated an acceptable safety profile for the candidate vaccine.“, he underlined.

In the past year, formulas from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer have been tested in the country, as well as antigens from AstraZeneca, developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford, and from Janssen. , Johnson’s pharmaceutical arm. & Johnson. All of them have been approved in different parts of the world and Brazil has acquired or signed contracts to supply itself with doses of these vaccines.

Likewise, on April 8, Anvisa gave the green light for phase 3 clinical trials of the formula developed by Canadian pharmaceutical company Medicago, which are expected to include approximately 3,500 participants.

With a population of over 210 million, Brazil is going through the worst phase of the pandemic and it already accumulates nearly 375,000 deaths and around 14 million infected.

(With information from EFE)

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