SANTIAGO Y LIMA (Reuters) – U.S. pharmaceutical company Johnson and Johnson added Chile, Argentina and Peru to Latin countries where it plans to conduct Phase III trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, the company showed on Wednesday.
It will involve 60,000 volunteers from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Mexico and will be coordinated through the pharmaceutical unit of J-J, Janssen and local university centers.
The company told Reuters that it expects regulatory approval in Chile, Argentina and Mexico.
“This multilateral collaboration arrangement … demonstrates the progress and commitment of collective efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said in a statement.
Miguel O’Ryan of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile, which will house the J-J trial, said that the parameters are still being developed, but that his team is able to recruit up to 1,000 volunteers for trials funded by vaccine developers.
“From our point of view, as soon as we have the vaccine available, in 3 weeks we can vaccinate the first volunteer,” he said.
Chile’s Ministry of Fitness responded to a request for comment.
The J-J trial is one of many likely to take place in Chile. Sinovac, whose essay is funded by the Chilean government, local industry and academy, is expected to launch a volunteer search soon, while the country is also in talks with CanSino Biologics Inc, AstraZeneca Plc and Moderna Inc.
In Peru, Carlos Castillo, the leading vaccine advisor at the Ministry of Health, told Reuters that J-J decided on study centers and that the trial would begin in mid-September.
On Wednesday, Chinese company Sinopharm began recruiting 6,000 volunteers for its own vaccine trials. Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra said he also hoped to be able to conduct joint tests of the AstraZeneca/University of Oxford vaccine until the end of August.
The J-J prototype uses “viral vectors” to generate immune responses, such as those taken by the vaccine developers of Oxford and CanSino of China.
Brazil, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia are the six Latin countries with the highest number of cases shown with coronavirus. Vaccine developers are for spaces with maximum rates of active transmission and infection, as this makes it less difficult to download reliable verification results.
J-J’s head of vaccines had in the past told Reuters that the company aimed to produce a billion doses of a possible vaccine next year.
Reporting through Fabian Cambero and Marco Aquino; written through Aislinn Laing; edited through Lisa Shumaker and Leslie Adler
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