MOSCOW – China and Russia, two countries whose efforts to expand coronavirus vaccines have drawn complaints from the United States, are stepping up cooperation in the race for inoculation.
Neighbors have the two main contenders to land COVID-19 blows. Of the nine candidate vaccines that have reached Phase 3 trials worldwide, 4 are Chinese, according to the World Health Organization. And Russia in mid-August made headlines for being the first to record a vaccine, called Sputnik V in honor of the mythical Soviet satellite.
Despite the promotion of its own vaccine, Moscow is excited to work with Chinese partners, signaling greater coordination between the two powers.
“Russian and Chinese study groups, which actively exchange reports on clinical trials of vaccines, will have significant joint effects on the progression of the means to combat the pandemic,” said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova late last month, when the two parties signed a memorandum for the status quo of a joint COVID-19 study laboratory
The laboratory will be led by the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Mechnikov Research Institute on Vaccines and Serums.
Previously, in mid-August, Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino Biologics began phase 3 testing of its coronavirus vaccine in Russia, through Petrovax Pharm, a major Russian pharmaceutical company.
A Petrovax representative told Nikkei Asian Review that the vaccine will be tested at 625 volunteers at 8 medical facilities across Russia. The trial is expected to last until the end of September and the effects are expected to be published this fall; volunteers will be followed for another six months.
Once the vaccine is registered through the Russian Ministry of Health, Petrovax intends to start generating it at its factory in the Moscow region for domestic and foreign markets, the representative added.
CanSino Biologics can be contacted for comment.
Nikolay Bespalov, director of progression at Moscow-based pharmaceutical company RNC Pharma, sees some reasons why Russia is exploring Chinese and foreign alternatives, even with Sputnik V in progress.
First, having vaccines would allow the health care formula to offer patients the most productive option; Second, it would help Russia ensure that it can meet an urgent need for a large number of ready-to-use vaccines.
“In addition, [the CanSino-Petrovax trial] is a direct opportunity to examine the clinical delight of competing drugs,” Bespalov added. “This data can be very useful in building a strategy to advertise promising Russian vaccines. “
Russia sees China as a springboard for Sputnik V in the Asian market.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which funded the program, is committed to producing two hundred million doses of the vaccine until the end of this year. DRIF Director Kirill Dmitriev revealed earlier this month that Russia is in talks with Chinese brands and distributors, and that the fund expects production to begin in China in early November.
“Mass production in China and other countries can begin in partnership with local partners,” He told the Chinese newspaper Global Times. “China has the ability to produce the vaccine and obtain it, only locally, but also by exporting it to other Asian countries. countries. “
Russia’s cooperation with China, however, is a purely publicity decision.
Alexander Gabuev, principal investigator at Carnegie Moscow Center, said geopolitical tensions with the West have led the two governments to combine paintings that compete in the global vaccine market.
“It is understood [by Moscow and Beijing] that many Western countries will say that Russian and Chinese vaccines are unreliable or not smart enough, and that in those cases they will have to play as a team,” he said.
Sputnik V has received strong criticism, and many scientists, and some in Russia, have expressed fear that Moscow is registering it before conducting phase 3 trials.
The United States has been at the forefront of foreign skepticism of Russian and Chinese candidates. Earlier this summer, Anthony Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease specialist, brazenly questioned the two countries’ efforts to advertise their vaccines before testing them completely.
In a radio interview last week, U. S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington’s mantra toward Chinese and Russian vaccines “distrusts but controls” and accused rivals of launching their vaccines into the market in hopes of making “a breakthrough. “
The United States has its own plans to expand a vaccine. In May, the Trump administration introduced “Operation Warp Speed,” an ambitious program to deliver 300 million doses of an effective COVID-19 vaccine through January 2021. $10 billion has been donated to 8 vaccine candidates, adding 3 recently underway Phase 3 trials, evolved through AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer.
A WHO official on Tuesday welcomed AstraZeneca’s resolve to temporarily suspend his global vaccine trials after an unexplained disease. “That’s what we need to do with rehearsals,” Harris told reporters, according to Reuters. “Safety is critical. “
However, some epidemiologists warn that Warp Speed would possibly rely too heavily on complex technologies not yet tested.
Michael Kinch, director of the Centers for Research Innovation in Biotechnology and Drug Development at Washington University in St. Louis, said program applicants are relying on technologies that, while innovative, are not necessarily effective in opposing the COVID-19 because they were originally evolved for oncology than infectious diseases.
On the other hand, he noted, China-backed vaccines have a more balanced combination of new technologies and classic vaccination methods, such as virus inactivation.
So far, he is compared to monetary strategies.
“If we have to look at vaccine portfolios as if they were two mutual funds, China has the maximum full portfolio while the West has the ultimate target portfolio,” Kinch said. “If the directed technique turns out to be correct, Western corporations will have great advantages. But if that turns out to be wrong, it will be China or the country that will do better. “
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