August 18, 2020 7:27
The agency released a document to respond to “inaccurate information and lacking scientific support” that circulated in the media in recent days.
In the midst of a coronavirus pandemic, the Argentine Society of Immunology (SAI) issued a statement to express its concern about the dissemination in the media of “Inaccurate information and lacking scientific support that confuses the population and threatens compliance with the measures that have been shown to avoid saturation of the health system and the deaths that this could cause.
In the text, which was disseminated in the media, they are listed four statements circulating with incorrect information and / or false with its respective answer.
As specified, “It is incorrect that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not be isolated from respiratory samples or be cultured in cell lines ”.
Facebook will alert users who interact with false information about the coronavirus
In this sense, they emphasize that “from the identification of the causative agent of COVID-19 until today, in an unprecedented response, the scientific community has made tremendous strides in the knowledge of the infection mechanisms and in the understanding of the causes that determine the severity of the disease ”.
In addition, it was recalled that SARS-CoV-2 was isolated and sequenced in January of this year and that there are at least 35,736 viral isolates to date. Indeed, in April the Malbrán institute sequenced the first three strains in Argentina; and days later another 26 followed in the Virology Laboratory of the Hospital de Niños Dr. Ricardo Gutiérrez, which forms the “Inter-institutional Consortium for Genome Sequencing and SARS-CoV2 Genomic Studies”, from where more than 400 genomes have already been identified in different laboratories around the country.
Coronavirus: CONICET scientists have already denied more than a hundred fake news about the disease
The second statement they clarify alleges that “the diagnostic kits are not specific for SARS-CoV-2.” In relation to this sentence, the SAI explains: “It is incorrect, since they have developed diagnostic kits that allow to discriminate if a person is infected with SARS-CoV-2 from those who are infected with other coronaviruses or are not infected with any of them “.
Coronavirus: SAI warns of false information
The SAI also recalled that “animal models have been developed with which they are studying the mechanisms of infection and disease “ , which are “providing evidence” to begin to explain “the reasons why some individuals experience mild illness while others progress to severe illness.”
“All this scientific advance achieved in just eight months is providing evidence that has begun to explain the reasons why some individuals experience mild illness while others progress to severe illness that can lead to death, in some cases even no known comorbidities ”, they continue on the testing of vaccine developments in animals.
Finally, the document recalled that all vaccines that are in clinical trials (with humans), were previously tested in mice and non-human primates and that both in these and in the first phases (I and II) of the clinical trials “they have shown acceptable levels of safety and immunogenicity”, which means that they did not cause serious side effects and that they generated antibodies, many of them neutralizing.
Listen to Radio Miter all day, click here.
If you want to listen to La 100, click here.
Follow us on Youtube
–
