Sinopharm: Details of the Chinese Vaccine that will arrive in Argentina

As expected since last week, the National government and the pharmaceutical company Sinopharm, they closed a contract to supply their vaccines to Argentina. Now all that remains is the authorization of the ANMAT, that will kick off the formal signing of the agreement and the sending of one million doses from Beijing.

It is estimated that this first shipment will arrive towards the end of February. Each Chinese vaccine costs 40 dollars – that’s two doses– and in the Casa Rosada they assure that the scientific review is advanced and that ANMAT would make the official announcement in the next few days.

The Sinopharm vaccine is one of the formulas that uses inactivated virus, a dead version of the germ that does not cause disease but generates antibodies and is already used in various vaccines such as influenza, hepatitis A, polio and rabies. The formula developed by China National Biotech Group, in collaboration with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products and the Chinese State Pharmaceutical, is the first vaccine to use a protein immunogen. Essentially, it is a whole virus inactivated COVID-19 vaccine, a different approach than what other advanced candidates are doing.

Consulted by Infobae, the biologist and doctor of science Federico Prada explained that “the technology applied in this vaccine consists of the use of inactivated virus obtained from Wuhan patients, which was isolated in Vero cells in culture ”. “This amplification was inactivated and used for clarification, that is, as if the virus were purified and used for immunization”added the director of the Bioinformatics degree and the Biotechnology degree of the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE).

Each Chinese vaccine costs 40 dollars -that’s two doses- and in the Casa Rosada they assure that the scientific review is advanced and that the ANMAT would make the official announcement in the coming days. 

“They are viruses that grow in Vero cells belonging to a cell lineage used in cell cultures (the Vero lineage was isolated from the kidney epithelial cells of an African green monkey). Y After having a certain viral load, the vaccine is inactivated through chemical methods and then prepared for application. This platform has already been successfully tested in the hepatitis A and polio vaccines, for example, “the infectologist and national government advisor said in dialogue with this medium. Eduardo López (M.N. 37.586).

For her part, the president of the Argentine Society of Vaccination and Epidemiology (SAVE), Florencia Cahn (MN 114.399), stated: “They use a virus that is previously inactivated so that the virus does not cause disease but it does generate an immune response. Interim Phase 3 results show an efficiency greater than 80%. In any case, it is data that is still being analyzed. But they are very good results ”.

For the president of the Argentine Society of Infectious Diseases (SADI), Omar Sued (MN 91.262), “is the most traditional way of making historic vaccines. It somewhat limits the production of vaccines worldwide by the method, and it also has the advantage that the conservation of this vaccine is much easier because it is from 2 to 8 degrees “.

Before the query long ago about what it would mean for our country to have the vaccine, the doctor Cahn had asserted: “It would be very important to reach an agreement between Argentina and Sinopharm, since being an inactivated virus vaccine, it would allow the arrival of vaccines to different corners of Argentina, which today, with the Sputnik V vaccine, which has a conservation at -18 degrees, it is being able to be distributed in large cities but it is more complex in some corners where really, if it is not in a refrigerator, it is very complex for a vaccine to arrive “.

The Sinopharm vaccine is one of the formulas that uses inactivated virus, a dead version of the germ that does not cause disease but generates antibodies and is already used in various vaccines such as influenza, hepatitis A, polio and rabies.
 

“For our country it is very good news. This is possible thanks to the fact that Argentina is participating in this research, otherwise it would be much more difficult. The strategy that was wagered on since September “, Sued emphasized,” in which we are trying to talk with all the vaccine producers in the world to try to get as much as possible, because obviously, to vaccinate 70 or 80% of our population, we need 30 or 40 million vaccines ”, he concluded López.

The doctor Osvaldo F. Teglia, Associate Professor in Charge of Infectious Diseases at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences of the Austral University, He stated that the arrival of this Chinese vaccine is a very good thing. “The worldwide development of several vaccines against a single virus tells us that the international scientific community took this disease seriously and it is something incredible that its implementation can lead us to a global immunity that stops this pandemic. It would be an effective response to COVID-19, which does not yet have an approved and effective treatment worldwide. On the other hand, today the preventive measures that we have to stop the virus, such as social distance and the use of a mask, are a real challenge for humanity to maintain for a long time. That is why the increasing importance of having a vaccine ”, slipped the expert.

And he completed: “The arrival in Argentina of various vaccines such as Sinopharm show that there are excellent researchers here and a proven history of long-standing clinical research and it is not something of now. These backgrounds in professionals, in biotechnology, in regulatory agencies such as ANMAT, positions us very well to have effective weapons like these vaccines in the face of the global threat of the virus ”.