Mexico is currently working to make its own coronavirus or COVID-19 vaccines and can have one ready by next spring, as per research coordinating local efforts amid a global race for taming a disease that has infected more than 26,7 million people globally.
Esther Orozco, the coordinator of the scientific group that is representing Mexico at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, stated that the research based on a virus that transmits the avian Newcastle disease is the most viable candidate for producing the first vaccine in Mexico.
Orozco mentioned that the vaccine developed by the private firm Laboratorio Avimex with the scientists from Mexico's main public university, UNAM, and the Mexican Social Security Institute, is ready for starting the first phase of testing with humans.
COVID-19 Vaccine Mexico
"They are advanced," Orozco told Reuters. "I think it's going to be ready by spring or the start of summer." She stated the Avimex vaccine trials are going to start with dozens of people. A second stage is going to see 'hundred of patients' before thousands of volunteers take part in final Phase 3 studies.
Avimex, which is normally dedicated to the manufacture of vaccines and the pharmaceutical products for animals, did not give any response to a request for comment. Mexico has started a global effort for building diplomatic and commercial alliances for ensuring to receives the approximately 200 million doses of vaccine it estimates it will require for a disease that has infected over 623,000 people and claimed the lives of at least 66,851 people in the second-largest economy of Latin America.
The country will take part in clinical trials of the Italian and Russian vaccines and also has struck a deal to produce AstraZeneca Plc's vaccine. Orozco said that the Mexican vaccine is going to arrive later than leading foreign candidates. "The world is going to need much more than one vaccine," she stated. "Our hope is that Mexico is a part of this even if we're not the first to cross the finish line."
(With agency inputs)
