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Divisive vaccine

Some 160 candidates, including eight in India, are in various stages of development, with 23 in clinical trials and six in the final, third-phase human trials.

Divisive vaccine

(Representational image: iStock)

Concerns raised by America’s top infectious diseases specialist, Dr Anthony Fauci, about the safety of vaccines being developed by China and Russia deserve to be taken seriously, notwithstanding the former choosing to use its vaccine candidate on its soldiers and the latter claiming its development will be a “Sputnik moment”, recalling the erstwhile Soviet Union’s foray into space.

Russia has claimed its vaccine will be ready in September, but even if this happens the product is likely to face intense scrutiny around the world. Some 160 candidates, including eight in India, are in various stages of development, with 23 in clinical trials and six in the final, third-phase human trials. But Russia has announced that a vaccine under development in Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute will be approved by August 10 even before Phase III trials commence and will be marketed from September.

While the first two trial phases are aimed at determining whether the candidate is safe for humans and induces human immunity, the third phase sees the vaccine being administered to thousands of volunteers over a period of time. Russia says it will carry out the third phase of trials after the launch of the vaccine, a decision Dr Fauci finds “problematic at best,” especially as Moscow has thus far released no scientific data in support of the product’s safety or efficacy.

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Last month, China announced that a vaccine developed by CanSino Biologics was being used to immunise the nation’s military causing ethical concerns to be voiced by several scientists. Two other Chinese companies, Sinovac and Sinopharm, have commenced final phase trials in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, respectively.

These are being watched closely, especially because of China’s somewhat dodgy record with vaccines ~ the most recent aberration having been in 2018 when 200,000 children were administered a defective vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough that caused paralysis in some recipients.

Overall, there is an almost Olympian fervour around the world ~ ironic in view of the cancellation of the Games ~ to launch the first vaccine and there are concerns that this frenetic rush may cause some short-cuts to be taken, with potentially fatal consequences. There is also an element of near Cold War-era competitiveness, encapsulated by the Sputnik remark and underscored by allegations that both China and Russia attempted to steal Western coronavirus research.

Three Western vaccine candidates – one produced by the American firm Moderna and the National Institutes for Health; the second by Oxford University and Britain’s AstraZeneca and the third by Germany’s BioNTech with American company Pfizer ~ are in final phase trials.

Dr Fauci’s remarks came amid a Congressional hearing where he commented, “I do not believe that there will be vaccines, so far ahead of us (the United States), that we will have to depend on other countries to get us vaccines.” The search for a vaccine that ought to have brought the world together appears to have further divided it.

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