Taking shortcuts in the race for a vaccine

When Alexander Ginzburg injected himself with the vaccine he had developed, he had not yet started testing the substance on monkeys. That happened four months ago, and Ginzburg, a microbiologist and director of the Gamalei State Institute in Moscow, says he's feeling fine. About a hundred employees of the institute also agreed to be vaccinated. And everyone is still healthy, writes Spiegel.

Ginzburg is working on a so-called vector vaccine, which involves inserting genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus into a mostly harmless virus to stimulate the human immune system to produce antibodies.

Ginzburg (68) says that he is not very interested in the risks of injecting the substance, which is still being worked on.

"I want to protect myself and my employees," he told Spiegel, claiming that his vaccine is both safe and effective.

After all, he says, he has already developed a vaccine under other circumstances.

Russian authorities hope to approve Ginzburg's vaccine as soon as possible, and health ministry officials say a decision could be made in the next few days. If approved, the vaccine will first be given to Russian doctors and teachers. It is not clear whether they will have the right to choose whether to receive it.

But Russia is not an isolated case. It is just one example of the heating up of the race for a vaccine against covid-19 fueled by autocratic countries like Russia and China, which are not always petty when it comes to medical and ethical standards, Spiegel writes.

Success in the research would mean that Moscow and Beijing could protect their populations more quickly and open up their economies before their rivals. A vaccine would not only be a breakthrough in the fight against the virus, but would translate into power, prestige and money, as the rest of the world would seek to buy it.

Looser than elsewhere

At the same time, premature use of a vaccine that is not ready for widespread use can have serious consequences. Politicians must be aware that rapid vaccine development is not their only challenge. They must convince the population that the vaccine is safe, commented Chandrakant Lahari, an epidemiologist from India, for Spiegel. The side effects that would later develop could lead to a situation where there would be "lost confidence not only in this vaccine, but also in every other developed anywhere in the world".

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 12 different vaccines have been developed in laboratories in 27 countries and are now being clinically tested. The tests are being carried out by teams from Great Britain, Japan, Germany, South Korea and the United States, but clinical trials and institutes have begun in China, India and Russia - three ambitious emerging markets with nationalistic leadership and less strict regulatory authorities, according to Spiegel. .

With more than 865.000 people infected with the coronavirus, Russia is currently the fourth most affected country, and President Vladimir Putin is encouraging the development of a vaccine. The government says more than 20 countries, from Asia to South America to Africa and the Middle East, have expressed interest in the vaccine. In Moscow, the so-called "Sputnik moment" is mentioned, which is an allusion to the launch of the first satellite into orbit in 1957, which the Soviet Union managed to do before the US.

However, epidemiologists such as Vasilij Vlasov from the Moscow School of Economic Sciences warn against premature euphoria. Victory comments coming from the Kremlin are like "propaganda from the Soviet era", he told "Spiegel". Vlasov criticizes the government's lowering of legal standards. Moscow intends to begin mass production of the vaccine in September or October, although clinical trials have not yet progressed to the crucial third phase of testing.

"Russia is violating internationally accepted rules," he said.

According to WHO vaccine guidelines, any new substance must first be tested in the laboratory and on animals before it can be used on humans. In the first phase of clinical trials, only a very small number of test subjects receive the vaccine, while the second phase involves tens, possibly hundreds, of people. In the third phase, tens of thousands of subjects are involved. Each stage is crucial to evaluate whether a new vaccine is safe and effective.

Nice bonus

Furthermore, participation in trials must be voluntary. Test subjects usually receive a monetary compensation, but it is not exorbitant. Also, all relevant data related to testing must be made public for review by government agencies and the scientific community.

The Gamaleja Institute clearly violates these guidelines in several ways, Spiegel notes. So far, little scientific data has been published, and only 76 subjects took part in the first and second phases of testing, half of whom were soldiers. The other half is made up of civilians who each took 100.000 rubles (about 1.200 euros) for participating in the testing. That's three average salaries in Russia. One of the volunteers, Ana Kutkina, calls this a "nice bonus" and intends to add the money to her savings, which she will spend on a house in the countryside that she has been dreaming about for a long time.

But it is not only Russian efforts that are driven by excessive enthusiasm. Impatience is also being shown in India. The pharmaceutical industry of this country is the largest producer of vaccines in the world, although many of them are developed elsewhere due to a lack of innovation capacity. Prime Minister Narendra Modi would like to change that situation. At least seven Indian pharmaceutical companies are currently trying to develop a vaccine against Covid-19. The company Barat Biotek has come the farthest. They called their test vaccine covaccine.

In early June, a letter from the director of the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) was leaked. According to the letter, test subjects will be given the covaccine "on July 7 at the latest" so that the vaccine will be available to the public by August 15. This date was not chosen by chance - August 15 is India's Independence Day.

The Indian Academy of Sciences quickly issued a statement saying the timing was "unfeasible" and "unreasonable". The company Barat Biotek then announced that it would take at least another five months for the eventual approval, so the ICMR was forced to step in. According to health expert Laharija, this incident shows that surveillance actually works in India.

"Would such a debate be possible for Russia or China?" he asked in an interview with "Spiegel".

Possible diplomatic fiasco

However, the biggest favorite in the race for a vaccine is China. Three of the six test vaccines currently in the third phase of testing were developed by Chinese scientists. The remaining three companies conducting the final phase of testing are the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, the German company Biontek and the American Moderna.

Until now, the vaccine has been administered to an unknown number of Chinese soldiers, who started receiving it at the end of June, before the third phase of testing began. That vaccine was developed by military scientists in cooperation with the Chinese company Kansino.

However, the Chinese face a problem that other countries may wish they could:

"They do not have enough patients with the coronavirus. The effectiveness of the vaccine can only be adequately tested where the test subjects face a certain risk of infection. As a result of strict isolation and surveillance measures, the virus has been almost eradicated in the country. For this reason, the Sinofarm company is conducting the third phase of testing in the United Arab Emirates, and Sinovak in Brazil. Beijing has already promised these two countries and other pro-China nations access to the vaccine, horse health expert Yanzhong Huang from the American Council on Foreign Relations told "Spiegel". , somewhat of a political risk: since China cannot control the media in countries that receive their vaccine, there may be a lot of coverage of possible side effects.

"That would be a diplomatic fiasco for China," said Huang.

Chinese testing serious

Based on testimony from one of the participants in the second phase of Kansin's clinical trials, the testing guidelines would be said to be stricter than those in Moscow. During the epidemic in Wuhan, Lao Ji delivered food and medicine on a moped. He remembers being horrified when he read a Chinese translation of an article from the medical journal "Lancet" that described how the immune system of a corona patient can get out of control.

On the weibo microblog, he found out that volunteers were wanted for trials and applied.

"I hope that the vaccine will be found as soon as possible," he said at the panel two days after receiving the test vaccine in April. "So I better do my part to help."

As he says, the scientists informed him in detail about the risks. A month before he received the dose, he was given a complete examination and presented with information about his health. He also committed to having his blood tested four times in six months.

Asked how much compensation he received for participating, he said that he did not remember. "It wasn't much. Maybe in the amount of my monthly salary," he told Špiglu, adding that he did not sign up for the test because of the money.

Vaccination espionage

Although China is currently ahead of others in vaccine development, the country has apparently also turned to its security services for help. In July, the US Department of Justice noted two Chinese hackers who allegedly searched for weaknesses in the computer system of networks of companies involved in research into a vaccine against Covid-19. The two hackers are believed to have been working under the auspices of China's Ministry of State Security.

The American company Moderna confirmed that the FBI informed it about the espionage attempt. The US President's administration has high hopes that this Massachusetts-based company will succeed in developing a vaccine, having provided almost a billion dollars for the project. The company started the third phase of testing at the end of January.

One of the three institutes with which Moderna cooperates is Houston's Baylor College of Medicine. The college's press office says it doesn't know if Baylor was targeted by Chinese hackers. But that's not surprising: US officials are currently conducting several investigations into suspected Chinese medical espionage in the Houston area. That was one of the reasons why the Trump administration ordered the Chinese consulate there to be closed in July.