SP will receive 15 million doses of the Chinese vaccine by the end of 2020

The Butantan Institute will receive 15 million doses of the Chinese vaccine, CoronaVac, by the end of this year. According to Dimas Covas, director of the Institute, the immunization material against the new coronavirus (Sars-CoV-2), which causes Covid-19 disease, is being produced in China and will be sent fractionally from October.
"I have emphasized that the vaccine will be available here in Butantan as early as October. In October we will receive 5 million doses, in November another 5 million doses and in December, another 5 million doses. These doses are already being produced there in China and therefore at the end of this year we will have 15 million doses available", said Dimas Covas in an interview with GloboNews on Wednesday morning (12).
The release for use of the vaccine in the population, however, will depend on the result of clinical trials and the approval of Anvisa.
"These vaccines are already previously developed, are in the process of production, will arrive here at the Butantan Institute and, therefore, this perspective of use is solely dependent on the results of the clinical study", explained the director.
The prospect, according to Dimas Covas, is that it will be available in January 2021, as announced by the São Paulo government at the end of July.
"I am optimistic, but optimistic based on the data, the facts. It's a real perspective. It's a prospect that has a huge chance of happening and from January we have this vaccine available," said Dimas Covas.
Also according to Dimas Covas, in addition to the doses already ready, the Institute will receive, from October, material to be able to start the process of producing the vaccine locally.
"Parallel to this, Butantan also receives from October, the vaccine in bulk, and then Butantan begins a process of production of this vaccine here, which is the phase of formulation, preparation and filling, put this vaccine in vials and then it is distributed. So that in addition to these 15 million that we will have in December, in the first quarter of next year, we can have another 15 million doses and by the first half, we can reach 60 million doses."
- - Other vaccines in development:
On Tuesday (11), the government of Russia approved the first vaccine against the disease and gave it the name Sputnik V. However, little is known about its effectiveness, which caused the announcement to be questioned by international experts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that immunization passed all the required checks, and revealed that his own daughter was vaccinated.
Russian authorities have plans to start a mass vaccination in October in the country. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), however, Sputnik is not on the list of six vaccines that have reached phase three of clinical trials.
In Brazil, the government of Paraná announced that it will close an agreement for the manufacture of Sputnik V, but Anvisa reported that the Russian laboratory did not ask for registration in the country.
Asked about such a vaccine, Dimas Covas said that the Butantan Institute was sought by representatives of the Russian laboratory, but said he had little information to make a critical analysis.
"We have no information about this vaccine, they (from Butantan) were sought some time ago by a representative of this vaccine, and without data it is very difficult to do a critical analysis. More importantly, vaccines are fundamental tools for maintaining health, so people who are going to take the vaccine have to be sure that this vaccine will be effective and safe, and at this point we know practically nothing about it."
Preliminary results published on Wednesday (12) in the scientific journal "Nature", one of the most important in the world, show that the vaccine BNT162b1, candidate against Covid-19 of the pharmaceuticals BioNTech and Pfizer, induced a "robust" immune response and had no serious side effects in adult volunteers.
The neutralizing antibody levels of the participants were 1.9 to 4.6 times higher than those of patients recovering from Covid-19, according to the study. These results, however, do not yet show the efficacy of the vaccine. This will be determined in phase 3 (the last).
So far, there are four countries that have reached the last stage of vaccine development: the United Kingdom, China, the United States and Germany. Here are the vaccines in this step:
- Sinovac (China)
- Wuhan/Sinopharm Biological Institute (China)
- Beijing Biological Institute/Sinopharm (China)
- Oxford/AstraZeneca (United Kingdom)
- Modern/NIAID (USA)
- BioNTech/Fosun Pharma/Pfizer (Germany and USA)
- - Safety and efficacy
A study published on Monday (10) points out that Chinese vaccine CoronaVac for Covid-19 showed safety and good immune response in 600 volunteers during phase 2 testing.
The study was published as a prepress, still unreached in scientific journals and without review by other scientists.
The director classified the results as "exceptional", and stated that in addition to confirming the induction of antibodies, the analyses indicate a low incidence of side effects.
"The results were exceptional, the vaccine showed antibody induction above 92% at the first dose and above 97% at the second dose, a very satisfactory performance. In addition, they also presented the safety of the vaccine, with a very low occurrence of side effects, below 3% of people who had some kind of side effect and these effects were very moderate, even mild, such as pain at the vaccine site and small fever", he highlighted.
"It is the vaccine that has the best safety profile, all other vaccines under test have a higher incidence of side effects and not all have this antibody production profile. So, it proves the data they had before starting the tests in Brazil and also proves that we have a vaccine of the most promising in the world, which may arrive later that year in Brazil and be used early next year for mass vaccination", completed Dimas Covas.
The participants were healthy adults aged 18 to 59 years and were randomly chosen to receive two doses of the experimental vaccine: double application of 3 micrograms each, or another of 5 micrograms. A part of the group also received placebo. Patients did not know what kind of vaccine they were receiving.