Page 14 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, MAY 2021, (English)

The Situation in Latin America
Latin America is one of the areas of the world most a ected by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the World Bank and one of the areas that received the fewest doses. According to the database developed by the University of Oxford Our world in Data, the Region was the recipient to date of two percent of the total doses applied, slightly more than Africa.
One of the main problems for access to more vaccines is the Region’s dependence on imports and the lack of economic capacity. Only four percent of the medical products used in Latin America for the response to covid-19 were produced in the Region, according to the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO.
Hence, negotiations with laboratories are very di icult: although all vaccines protect against death by the virus, the most expensive are the most e ective, di icult to obtain for this area of the world.
This is con rmed by the professor of the Faculty of Medicine and Public Health of the University of Flinders, in South Australia, Nikolai Petrovsky: “Some are better than others, although any vaccine is still better than nothing, but certain doses may have little bene t in preventing the spread, even if they reduce the risk of death or serious illness”.
According to a study produced by the University of Miami, conducted by scientists Julia Shapiro, Natalie Dean and Ira Longini, 94 percent of those vaccinated with P zer do not even become infected with the virus, blocking their transmission completely and of course they did not get sick. The gure is 80 percent of those injected with Moderna. An analysis by the Food and Drugs Administration, FDA found that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is 72 percent e ective in preventing infection in all variants and 86 percent in protecting against death or illness; 65 percent for Janssen and 50 percent for AstraZeneca. The data are very similar with respect to the British variant. P zer’s remains the most e ective: 75 percent of those vaccinated with this drug did not su er any disease after being in contact with this mutation, while the gure dropped to 50
percent of those vaccinated with Janssen and Novavax, and 22 percent of those at AstraZeneca.
Vaccine Categories
According to some analysts, the laboratories made magni cent e orts, and in a very short time they managed to massively produce vaccines in two categories: those that, along with avoiding morbidity, prevent contagion, that is, they stop the infection even when they come into contact with sick people and those that only lessen the severity of the ailment, that is, they avoid death and prolonged hospitalizations, but do not stop the spread of the disease. The rst, the most complete, are very expensive, complex to produce and transport due to their special infrastructure needs, while the second are more accessible to middle-income or poor countries, less di icult to produce and, therefore, more available.
Territories with reduced economic capacity, such as Latin America, Africa and some Asian territories managed to access only immunizations that prevent the worsening of the disease, death and clogging in hospitals. “The whole objective of the policy of our countries in Latin America is not to reach the last available bed. When this happens, the situation is managed with quarantines, forcing the population to stay locked up in their homes to avoid more infections, but there is no direct attack on the disease, as is being done in the northern hemisphere; only protection is observed so that hospital services are not exceeded”.
Hence, several countries in the Region have ventured to produce their own vaccines.
Immunizations in the Region
Argentina is manufacturing the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and the active ingredient from the Swedish-British AstraZeneca. “The rst batch of the vaccine arrived at the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow for the supervision of its quality control,” reported from the Ministry of Health on the progress of the manufacture, which hopes to increase to ve million doses per month with the intention to export it to
the rest of the continent.
Regarding the AstraZeneca vaccine, the Argentine laboratory mAbxience was selected to manufacture the active principle of the vaccine, which is then packaged in Mexico by the Liomont laboratory. The idea, in the near future, is to distribute at a ordable prices up to 250 million doses in the Region.
According to the Mexican epidemiologist Noe Alfaro, “it is only about emergency licenses for vaccines from laboratories outside our countries. The local authorities have been dismantled, and dependency has been privileged over self-su iciency”. Brazil, for its part, began in February the manufacture of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine from Sinovac, in charge of the local Butantan Institute, as well as, in March, the preparation of AstraZeneca, in the plants of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), linked to the country’s Ministry of Health. Pedro Villardi, doctor in Human Sciences and Health from the State University of Rio de Janeiro and coordinator of the Working Group on Intellectual Property (GTPI), which links numerous civil society organizations, said that technology transfer agreements were signed with the laboratories that hold intellectual property rights, “but patents are a barrier that prevents other laboratories from producing vaccines and other technologies,” added the expert. He said: “Thus, there is an arti cial shortage, which allows companies to decide prices, which countries receive before and which ones after. There is vaccination discrimination in the world,”.
In Cuba there are two vaccines in their phase three of clinical trials, soon to be launched on the market, the so-called Soberana 02 and Abdala. If the approval of the Cuban National Regulatory Agency is achieved, something that seems very likely, these immunizations will become the rst anticovid vaccines conceived and produced in Latin America in the coming months.
In Chile, the Ponti cal Catholic University is coordinating and facilitating the arrival of the Chinese laboratory in the country, Sinovac, seeking to establish a plant in order to supply the demand from all of Latin America.
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