Coronavirus: how many vaccines will Argentina receive in …

In a scenario marked by powerful countries seeking to monopolize vaccines and developing countries trying to achieve the doses and immunize their populations as soon as possible, the Argentine government has pursued the same strategy from the start: do not close the doors and conduct active and insistent research with a view to reaching agreements. In this sense, he negotiated the arrival in February of a supplement 580 thousand doses of AstraZeneca / Oxford, and 580 thousand more in March, which will come from the Serum Institute of India. The contract has already been signed, they would start arriving from next week and the information was provided by the laboratory itself. This post is in addition to the one that the biotechnology company has committed to send in March (22.4 million doses) and to which they will arrive via the Covax mechanism.

This Wednesday, the WHO Covax platform (which ensures the equitable distribution of vaccines around the world) said that until June, they plan to distribute 337 million doses in 145 countries. As confirmed by the Coalition for Innovation in Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI), the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, the World Health Organization and UNICEF, the distribution of 240 million doses of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine will be produced by the Serum Institute, and this figure will be added an additional $ 97 million to be delivered under the advance purchase agreement between Gavi and AstraZeneca for the first and second quarters of 2021.

In the first half of the year, Argentina will receive 2.2 million and 9 million in total. The Covax mechanism created by the World Health Organization also provides for the distribution of doses from other companies, as it has a diverse portfolio. In fact, the brief predicts that 1.2 million doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech formula will be available in the first quarter of 2021, although “subject to the conclusion of additional agreements”. In this case, based on the consideration of different criteria – such as mortality rates, the number of doses available and the feasibility of their immediate use – in Latin America they will be received by Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador and Peru. In total, these four countries will receive 377,910 doses, or nearly a third of the total.

For its part, the Argentinian laboratory mAbxience has already sent the second batch of active substance equivalent to six million doses and is currently producing the fourth. The Liomont laboratory is the one which, from Mexico, packages it and will distribute it from March to April to all Latin American countries except Brazil. Sources close to the local laboratory confirmed Page 12 that the Mexican biotech company is lagging slightly behind in its part of the process due to the difficulty of accessing critical inputs for production. However, the good news is that the problem is not yet resolved and production will soon resume its normal pace. Argentina will start receiving its doses between March and April. It should be remembered, as Alberto Fernández reported months ago, the arrival of 22.4 million doses had been agreed.

In addition, government continues to bid on purchase agreement to acquire 1 million doses of vaccine produced by Chinese state-owned Sinopharm which carries out part of its phase III trials in Vaccine Centers based on the coordination of the Guest Foundation directed by Doctor Pedro Cahn. The main obstacle to the Chinese formula is that they are very expensive compared to the rest. While that of AstraZeneca, Gamaleya and Pfizer are respectively worth 4, 10 and 18 dollars, that produced by the giant of the East would cost around 30 dollars the unit. If this obstacle is unblocked, Argentina and China could sign an agreement to guarantee the arrival of 30 million doses.

Tuesday the Centro gamaleya published the interim results of its phase III in the prestigious journal The Lancet. The news was received so well that it quickly had a positive impact. The government of the province of Buenos Aires has confirmed that in the past 24 hours, the daily average of registrations in online registers for vaccination has almost doubled throughout the territory of Buenos Aires. The confirmation of this wave of registrations was made by the head of the Health portfolio, Daniel Gollan, specifying that, since the voluntary registration in the vaccination registers became available, “we were arriving at a rate of between 30,000 and 35 thousand recorded per day. “Now yesterday,” after the publication of The Lancet, it almost doubled “that amount, the official said.

In this sense, it should be mentioned that despite the enthusiasm, the Russian variant comes with a slight delay in your production line. This fact is nothing new, as was confirmed last week by spokespersons for the Russian Fund for Direct Investments (which finances the escalation of Sputnik V) and is consistent with what the vast majority of factories in charge of manufacturing technology around the world. In addition to Russia and Argentina, 16 countries have already authorized the emergency use of this vaccine and, on Wednesday, Mexico and Nicaragua joined. In no time, depending on what happened, the production bottleneck could be unblocked and the pace of large-scale manufacturing for the delivery of doses could be unblocked, as the Russian lab had agreed with the government. Argentine. After the middle of the month, deliveries could be normalized and reach larger shipments with the medium-term goal of receiving the agreed 20 million doses. So far, Aerolineas Argentinas has performed three flights: two of 300,000 and the rest of 220,000 doses.

It is also expected that in the coming days, to conclude an agreement with local companies to carry out the technology transfer process and that Sputnik V can be produced in national laboratories. This procedure is complex as it depends on the capacities installed and, although Argentina has proven to have excellent infrastructure and human resources for this (the mAbxience laboratory is reliable proof of this), the installation of a factory would take a time. This could work as a long term plan, as it is difficult to start increasing production but when it is achieved, as Health Access Secretary Carla Vizzotti said, a “virtuous circle” is engaged.

The conflict that currently involves vaccine availability could be reversed in no time. Then when the pharmaceutical companies start to produce at a good rate, the challenge will again be logistical. The most optimistic actors assure that there will be vaccines and the problem will lie in large-scale inoculation. At that time, the provinces should be ready to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible. It will be vital that a large part of the population agree to be vaccinated, as this will be the only way to achieve the herd effect. It is estimated that when 70% of the population is vaccinated, it will be possible to stop the spread of Sars CoV-2 and to return – if this is the general wish – to the “old normal”.