RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil will begin its final testing stage for one of the proposed coronavirus vaccines on July 20th. Brazil’s National Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA) authorized the start of trials by the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, a partner of Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech since last month.
With 1.6 million cases and almost 65,000 deaths from the disease, Brazil has come under international companies’ radar as a volunteer center for the trials, which require a location where the virus circulation is still high. In addition to joining the Chinese initiative, the country has also entered into a partnership with Oxford University to conduct the final trial stage of the vaccine developed by the British university, which began to be tested on volunteers on June 15th.
According to the São Paulo State Government, to which the Butantan Institute is linked, as of July 13th approximately 9,000 volunteers, from five states and the Federal District, will be able to register for screening. Only health professionals who are working directly in the treatment of patients with Covid-19 can volunteer, because they are more exposed to the virus. There is a list of restrictions for taking part, such as not having been infected with the coronavirus and not having diseases that require drugs capable of altering the immune response. Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná are the states where 12 research centers will be conducting the recruitment and testing.
The ANVISA authorization required some 25 days to be released, a time considered quite short for such cases. “ANVISA worked actively in technical terms to solve the pending issues it had in the beginning,” said Dimas Covas, president of the Butantan Institute. According to him, the preliminary analysis of this stage’s results is expected to be released later this year, so that the vaccine distribution can be achieved by the middle of next year.
However, Covas has not provided a specific deadline for distribution. If the vaccine is proven effective in this last testing stage, Brazil will receive up to 60 million doses from Sinovac by the end of the year for distribution.
The agreement between the Chinese pharmaceutical company and the Brazilian institute provides that, in a second stage, the vaccines may also be manufactured in Brazil. The Butantan says it is adapting a manufacturing facility with a production capacity of up to 100 million doses of the vaccine.
The first two testing stages of the CoronaVac occurred in China. Currently, according to Dimas Covas, 136 vaccines are under development worldwide, 12 of which are already in clinical trials, and three in their third testing stage, which is generally the final one. Of the three in their final stage, two are undergoing trials in Brazil.
In addition to this agreement between the Butantan Institute, on June 27th the Ministry of Health announced a partnership with the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, to be part of the final round of research for another vaccine, with 5,000 volunteers. The tests began last week, under the coordination of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), in Rio de Janeiro.
Flattening trend
This stage of clinical trials of the vaccine by the Butantan Institute comes at a time when the Government of São Paulo is claiming to be moving towards a flattening of both the contagion and death curves. Currently, the State is the country’s leader in number of cases and deaths, with 323,070 infections and 16,134 deaths reported as a result of the coronavirus.
However, the government reports that for the second consecutive week there has been a drop in the number of deaths by Covid-19 and that the lethality rate has dropped to five percent, the lowest since the start of the pandemic.
Nevertheless, the figures remain high, proving that the disease is not under control in the state, which today has several cities, including the capital, reopening its economy for businesses such as shops, malls, restaurants, and gyms.
According to the State Health Secretariat and the Coronavirus Contingency Center, in the week between June 14th and 20th, there were 1,913 reported deaths. In the following seven days, between June 21st and 27th, there were 1,769 deaths recorded. And in the period between June 28th and July 4th, there were 1,733 deaths notified as a result of Covid-19. The current number is 9.5 percent lower than that recorded 16 days ago, according to the State Government.
Source: El País