Participants in the near-scientific race for the right to save humanity from the COVID-19 pandemic are behaving more assertively. So, the US has accused Chinese hackers of trying to steal American vaccine designs. Russia will not quarrel with anyone, but there is hope for the appearance of our vaccine by September. Pharmacists in Britain, Germany and Israel have announced successes. What are the benefits for the country that first created the drug that is now needed around the world?
Vladimir Putin hopes that already in September the Russian coronavirus vaccine will be ready. He said this on Thursday at a meeting with leading virologists in the country, in which Rinat Maksyutov, general director of the Novosibirsk center “Vector” also participated. Maksyutov, whose center is still leading the development of the Russian version of the vaccine, reported: in June, studies of the vaccine on three hundred volunteers will be completed.
“I very much hope that the registration of the vaccine against coronavirus will be carried out in September,” Putin replied and demanded that Russia’s rights to the vaccine be registered in advance.
“There are six “Vector” vaccines, three more vaccines of other developers,” said Anna Popova, head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare. According to her, the World Health Organization (WHO) included all nine drugs that are being developed in Russia in the list of promising ones.
According to WHO, more than a hundred pharmaceutical companies around the world have already joined this race, and eight samples are already undergoing clinical trials. However, the production of the drug in any case will begin no earlier than next year, warn the WHO. And based on the words of the director of “Vector”, we can conclude: if Russia does not lead in the development of vaccines, then at least it does not lag behind others.
If we evaluate the vaccine race on a global scale, then now seven scientific centers and pharmaceutical companies are leading in it, the Russia 24 channel reported with reference to the WHO report. The competition is led by: three Chinese companies, the British University of Oxford and three American firms.
On Thursday, German pharmaceutical company CureVac, the very one whose developments in March tried to outbid the United States on the personal instructions of Donald Trump, also announced the first data in vaccine development tests. As the newspaper VZGLYAD reported, then Washington was not able to get German development for monopoly use. But in parallel, the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer creates a vaccine in collaboration with another German (or rather, pan-European) company BioNTech SE.
US cooperates with EU and quarrels with China
The Americans are actively – and, in their words, fruitful – interacting with the British from Oxford. On Thursday, a group of molecular biologists and physicians from the US National Institutes of Health and the University of Oxford reported: the experimental vaccine was successfully tested on macaques, and the first phase of clinical trials in human volunteers has been underway since April.
If the States cooperate with Europeans, then they entered into a tough conflict with China. On the eve of the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security accused the “Chinese hackers” in an attempt to hack the servers of American vaccine developers. The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday expressed extreme dissatisfaction with such suspicions. On the contrary, Beijing should worry about stealing its valuable information, because it is China that is “at the forefront in the development of medicines and vaccines for coronavirus,” said Zhao Lijian, the representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
“The one who makes the least mention of this will be the first to make the vaccine,” Viktor Zuev, head of the department of microbiology of latent infections at the Gamalea Institute, suggested in a commentary to the newspaper VZGLYAD. – Creating a drug is not an easy task, on the way to the realization of which there will be a lot of surprises. The first vaccine will be ineffective. Perhaps the next one will be effective, but not very safe. Etc. There are many nuances. So time will judge everyone. ”
According to Zuev, the European Union in this pursuit, of course, lags behind China and the United States. “And in this race it does not play a special role whether the developers are collaborating with WHO – such synergy is unlikely to bring benefits. The World Health Organization plays a minimal role here. After all, the manufacture of a biological product is always competition, the expert argues. – Who is happy to reveal their cards in the pursuit? To nobody. Because development costs a lot of money. ”
Recall that German Chancellor Angela Merkel previously estimated the work on a vaccine against coronavirus in an astronomical amount of 8 billion euros.
How much will the vaccine cost for the people
The president of the American Center for Global Interests, Nikolai Zlobin, is confident that the United States, if they are the first to produce the vaccine, will not pick up the price, but this will not happen at all from an excess of generosity. “America is much more profitable to earn political capital by showing its leadership in the field of pharmacology than to earn a certain amount of money. That’s why Americans are now afraid that someone else will be the first to open the vaccine,” Zlobin told VZGLYAD newspaper.
In addition, adds Zlobin, this is exactly the scenario that the lobbyists of the US insurance business will seek. “The cost of the vaccine will be determined by the position of American insurance companies, which already largely determine the return on any medicine. And the low cost of the vaccine against COVID-19 is beneficial for insurance companies – for the speedy end of the pandemic, because insurers are already suffering huge losses, and may suffer even larger ones, ” the American explained.
If the first vaccine against coronavirus appears in Russia, then it will cost ordinary consumers only one and a half thousand rubles, like about other conventional vaccinations. This price was announced in early May by the Director General of the Russian biotechnological company Biocad Dmitry Morozov in an interview with RIA Novosti.
And according to the forecast of the head of Rospotrebnadzor Popova, not one, but several vaccines will appear on the world market in general. In her opinion, “there cannot be one vaccine; they will be different in terms of degree of exposure, degree of response.” So, it is possible that the inhabitants of the Earth will still have to make a painful choice which of the long-awaited vaccines to use for their injection.
Benefits for the Discoverer
According to the director general of the Russian Council on Foreign Affairs, Andrei Kortunov, the country that opens the vaccine will receive many benefits. However, for this she needs to win a geopolitical confrontation akin to the Soviet-American space race.
“If the US gets the vaccine first, it will be a revenge for the Trump administration, which so far is losing the fight against COVID-19. In this case, Washington will score a prestige goal against Beijing and try to make money selling vaccines to other countries, ” Kortunov told VZGLYAD newspaper.
“If the vaccine is to be created in China, this will consolidate the Celestial Empire’s success in the fight against the virus and will confirm that the Chinese system and science are on the rise. It will also be a trump card for Beijing in terms of using soft power, ” the source said.
As for the prospects for Germany, pharmacology has always been a strong point of German industry and science, the expert said.
“The vaccine will be used by Berlin for integration purposes to strengthen the European Union and will be a worthy end to Angela Merkel’s political career,” the political scientist suggested.
“Well, if Russia becomes the pioneer of the vaccine, this will change the status of our country in the hierarchy of world science and allow us to stop talking about the development of domestic science in decline. It will also be a huge plus for our soft power, although Moscow has previously demonstrated its willingness to help other countries, as was the case with Italy and Serbia, ” Kortunov summed up.