Pharmaceutical companies are working at an accelerated pace to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus that has infected more than 100.000 people worldwide.
Behind the scenes, scientists and medical experts fear that speeding up vaccine production procedures could end up worsening the infection in some patients rather than preventing it. Studies show that coronavirus vaccines carry the risk of worsening the condition, that is, instead of protecting against infection, the vaccine actually worsens the disease when the vaccinated person becomes infected with the virus. The mechanism that causes this risk is not entirely clear and is one of the obstacles that has prevented the successful development of a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Under normal circumstances, researchers conduct tests on animals for months to determine whether there is a chance that the vaccine will make the disease worse. Bearing in mind the urgency of the situation due to the rapid spread of the new coronavirus, some pharmaceutical companies immediately switch to limited tests on humans, without first waiting for such tests to be completed on animals.
"In general, I understand the importance of speeding up the vaccine production process, but based on everything I know, with this vaccine, it shouldn't be done," Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told Reuters. Hotez worked to develop a vaccine for SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which also belongs to the coronavirus family and which caused an epidemic in 2003, and discovered that some vaccinated animals developed the disease in a more severe form than unvaccinated ones. "There is a risk of deterioration," said Hotez and added that this risk decreases if tests confirm that this does not happen in laboratory animals. Reuters reminds that there is no vaccine for any of the new coronaviruses that have caused epidemics in the past 20 years.
However, at this moment, world experts believe that it is worth taking the risk with accelerated testing. At an extraordinary meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) held in mid-February to coordinate the global response to the new coronavirus, representatives of research and pharmaceutical companies agreed that the threat is so great that human tests should begin as soon as possible, before animal tests are completed, she said. are four sources for Reuters.
"You want a vaccine as soon as possible," said Dr. Marie Paul Kieni, a former assistant director-general of the WHO. "Then you have to balance that against the risk to a very small number of people, and do everything possible to limit that risk as much as possible. National agencies are in charge of regulatory oversight of pharmaceutical companies and medical research. The most influential of them, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has indicated that it agrees with the consensus reached and will not prevent accelerated testing.
"When responding to public health emergencies like the novel coronavirus, we intend to exercise regulatory flexibility and consider all relevant data for a particular vaccine platform," FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Kakomo said.
Chinese officials claim they will have a coronavirus vaccine ready for emergency situations and clinical trials next month.
Eight institutes in that country are working on five vaccination approaches in an effort to combat Covid-19, Chinese media reported. According to data as of Tuesday evening, the virus has infected more than 118.000 people worldwide and 4200 have died, mostly in mainland China.
"According to our estimates, we hope that some vaccines will be clinically tested or used in emergency situations in April," Zheng Zhongwei, director of the Science and Technology Development Center of the National Health Commission, said on Friday.
Chinese law requires 12 to 18 months of testing to make vaccines safe for the public, but they can be used earlier in health emergencies if the benefits are judged to outweigh the risks.
Zheng dismissed concerns about the safety of the vaccines, saying they were developed in accordance with "scientific and standardized technical requirements."
Massachusetts-based biotech company Moderna Inc. last month sent its vaccine to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The first results could be published in July or August.
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