COVID-19 vaccine development pipeline gears up

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30 January 2021....Opinion by Jorge Fontevecchia, Co-founder of Editorial Perfil - CEO of Perfil Network.
Vaccine world....
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It started as vaccine diplomacy and is evolving into the war for vaccines. Many countries ordered purchases much higher than their needs, and today the laboratories that produce them have a bottleneck in their delivery, generating hysterical situations. Canada, for example, ordered vaccines for five times its population and Israel paid a higher price for Pfizer vaccines to ensure early delivery.

Apart from the differences, what in the twentieth century was the arms race today is the vaccination race: who reaches the highest percentage of its population first. In any case, even if the rich countries manage to have 100% of their inhabitants vaccinated at the beginning of 2022, if half of the world only achieved the same at the beginning of 2023 and the poorest countries only at the beginning of 2024, although limited, the danger of the coronavirus will be with us for a long time.

As of January 29, countries with smaller populations such as Israel (52%) or the United Arab Emirates (31%) top the list with the highest percentage of vaccination over the total population. They are followed by England (15%) and the USA (8%). From there comes the platoon of EU countries: Spain, Italy, Poland, France and Germany, to which Turkey and Canada join, with between 2 and 3% vaccinated of the population. Then China, with little less than 2% of its gigantic population, Russia with 1%, followed by Brazil and Argentina, which are close to 1%. Mexico follows, with 0.50% of its population and India with 0.25% because, like China, there are more than 1.300 million inhabitants.

That countries like China and Russia prefer to deliver part of their own vaccine production to other countries, delaying the immunity of their own population, is explained by the possibility that it allows world powers to use vaccines as a weapon of geopolitical positioning and the submission of their population. To accept the decisions of their governments added to their different subjective value of life. Another curiosity is Japan, which, having the economic resources of the United States or Europe, confirmed its uniqueness by deciding to start vaccinating only in February.

There are controversies of all kinds. England, which decided to vaccinate more people with a single dose than less with the two and achieve greater coverage. Or Indonesia, where it is debated whether to vaccinate essential workers first or the elderly.

The manufacture of 6.4 billion vaccines planned for 2021 concentrated in the richest countries assumes the need to repeat vaccination campaigns such as the annual flu vaccinations in 2022. The problem is not limited to the ability to pay the cost of the vaccine or to produce it. As China and India and Russia itself with huge populations and territory demonstrate, the cost of distribution, refrigeration and logistics for its application is higher than that of the vaccine itself. The poorest countries will depend on the World Health Organization's Covax Initiative, which will distribute vaccines to 20% of their populations. Yet even so, a significant part of Africa and Central Asia will continue not to vaccinate, just as they don't vaccininate against polio and measles, which have been available for decades.

Although the virus will continue to coexist among us and mutate, the developed world is on its way to “tame” the coronavirus in 2021, which cost more than two million lives and economic losses of 375 billion dollars a month in 2020. Finally, the advancement of science must be highlighted, which in just over a year found and manufactured a dozen vaccines with a global reach.
 
Why am I getting the feeling that Argentina is about to fall deadfully behind in the immunization race in 2021, just as it did with infection rates and fatalities in 2020 due to a tendency of counting their chickens before they have hatched and placing too many eggs in one basket.

Some of our neighbors have shown that if there is a serious and diligent effort made then there is a way to get vaccines, yet all we get are excuses and as a result, very few vaccines after the initial fanfare.
- Brazil - 2m doses administered
- Chile - 67k doses administered with 2m+ now onshore, available and being administered

I really don't think so: Brazil is administering a very mistrusted Sinovac vaccine which showed 50% effectivity in their trials. Chile, after the laughable media show on the runway with a paltry 10,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine at the end of last year, scrambled to get the same mistrusted Sinovac vaccine that nobody else wants, rubber-stamped by its health regulator, and without a word of criticism from the sycophantic Chilean media. Maybe Sinovac is better than nothing, but nothing is what Chile planned for, not having placed significant orders for the Sputnik (which they were also trying to get), BioNTech, or Oxford vaccines.

Argentina's eggs are in at least two baskets, Sputnik and Oxford, and production problems are affecting all of the most desired vaccines as far as I can see.
 
I really don't think so: Brazil is administering a very mistrusted Sinovac vaccine which showed 50% effectivity in their trials. Chile, after the laughable media show on the runway with a paltry 10,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine at the end of last year, scrambled to get the same mistrusted Sinovac vaccine that nobody else wants, rubber-stamped by its health regulator, and without a word of criticism from the sycophantic Chilean media. Maybe Sinovac is better than nothing, but nothing is what Chile planned for, not having placed significant orders for the Sputnik (which they were also trying to get), BioNTech, or Oxford vaccines.

Argentina's eggs are in at least two baskets, Sputnik and Oxford, and production problems are affecting all of the most desired vaccines as far as I can see.
One of those baskets has efficiency of 60% according to the EMA (or 10% more than Sinovac according to Brazil), the other is hardly one of the “most desired” vaccines internationally due to transparency and “trust” issues. With 198 countries in the world competing for the same new vaccines, delays and poorer than expected results were to be expected from the outset meaning you do whatever you can to get contracts with as many as you can as early as you can. Now it seems Argentina is scrambling to get contracts and now just needs to take a ticket and wait at the back of the line.

Just in case one is not up to speed with what has been happening in Chile since December - it is worth pointing out that Chile has approvals and contracts for:
- Astrozenaca (6,6 million doses pending from April)
- Sinovac (2 million doses arrived last week + 2 million more doses arrived yesterday + 6 million doses pending)
- Pfizer (10 million doses contracted, only 160k or so have been distributed to date)
- J&J (4 million doses committed to, approval pending)

The planned Ya Me Vacuno program launches nationwide today (01FEB)

 
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One of those baskets has efficiency of 60% according to the EMA (or 10% more than Sinovac according to Brazil), the other is hardly one of the “most desired” vaccines internationally due to transparency and “trust” issues. With 198 countries in the world competing for the same new vaccines, delays and poorer than expected results were to be expected from the outset meaning you do whatever you can to get contracts with as many as you can as early as you can. Now it seems Argentina is scrambling to get contracts and now just needs to take a ticket and wait at the back of the line.

Just in case one is not up to speed with what has been happening in Chile since December - it is worth pointing out that Chile has approvals and contracts for:
- Astrozenaca (6,6 million doses pending from April)
- Sinovac (2 million doses arrived last week + 2 million more doses arrived yesterday + 6 million doses pending)
- Pfizer (10 million doses contracted, only 160k or so have been distributed to date)
- J&J (4 million doses committed to, approval pending)
My reading about the situation in Chile last week led me to believe some of the other orders would be canceled due to the Sinovac arriving. I can't find a link right now though. Chile treats such things as state secrets so the information may not be out there.

Regarding vaccine efficacy, it's a complex subject. To take the Oxford vaccine as an example, the 60% you refer to is some midpoint between 0% efficacy immediately after vaccination and 70% 14 days after, with 90% after the second dose (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32623-4/fulltext and https://theconversation.com/the-oxf...using-both-is-australias-best-strategy-152976). I don't know how the Sinovac efficacy is calculated, do you?.

In reality, manufacturing the Oxford vaccine with delivery expected in March / April, given the delays experienced by other countries, Argentina isn't waiting at the back of the line. Argentina has the contracts, the vaccines seem to be very good, it's just going to take a bit longer than hoped. It could be more by luck than design, this is Argentina after all, but I don't see a reason to cry "Wolf!!" yet.
 
More grist. This may be behind a paywall. If so, my apologies.

Thanks, this is a very interesting article. I guess with the New Yorker you get a few free articles (maybe even per month), like Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and so on, before they paywall you
 
My reading about the situation in Chile last week led me to believe some of the other orders would be canceled due to the Sinovac arriving. I can't find a link right now though. Chile treats such things as state secrets so the information may not be out there.
All information in Chile these days, including from official sources, cites no changes to the other orders and continues to refer to them as forming part of the campaign. Was the article a primary source or possibly just journalistic scaremongering? (I understand some in Chile are nervous about the Chinese vaccine, as some in Argentina are about the Russian vaccine - hence such fodder is to be expected)

Their strategy is to get their hands on as many different vaccines as possible and as quickly as possible to safely meet their vaccination milestones (e.g. first milestone of 5m in first quarter, realistic since most stock is now on hand annual influenza vaccines in Chile usually reach about 8m in three months through regular distribution channels) and to diversify their chances in case of issues with some vaccines that could become apparent only over time. Don't see any state secrets here... in fact ministry meeting minutes and decisions are on public record to peruse...?


 

Better late than never. Let’s hope they get serious about logistics soon.

Note on DHL: They do actually operate in Argentina and their planes can land here and unload etc like in any other country. They made themselves available earlier on (and also are/ were the preferred carrier of some vaccine suppliers, a factor attributed to failures in securing at least one contract earlier) but this was rejected by the Argentine government.
 
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