- Marcos Gonzalez Diaz
- BBC News World correspondent in Mexico
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image source, Getty Images
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Shortly after vaccination against covid-19 began in Mexico at the end of 2020, its government made it clear that it did not want to be left behind in the global race for immunization and announced that it would manufacture its own biological.
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“Homeland” was the name chosen for the vaccine by the president himself, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in reference to the famous work of the poet Ramón López Velarde. His wish was not to depend on other countries or external companies to protect the population.
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“A vaccine with that name means that we must always think about being independent,” he said last April.
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The initial objective was for Patria to be ready by the end of 2021 and for Mexico to become the second country in Latin America, after Cuba, to develop its own vaccine. But the year is over and Patria is still a project.
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Meanwhile, the Mexican government seized more than 200 million doses from up to seven different companies for its population. More than 314,000 people have died, according to official government data.
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Now, with a completely different pandemic situation than when Patria’s development began – more than 90% of the population over 18 years of age is vaccinated in Mexico, new and more contagious variants of the virus have appeared, etc. – some wonder what will be the usefulness of this Mexican vaccine when it’s finally available.
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The National Council for Science and Technology (Conacyt), which coordinates this project developed by the private laboratory Avimex, however, defends its importance for Mexico to recover its lost sovereignty for decades as a vaccine producer.
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Of course, the director of Conacyt, Maria Elena Alvarez-Buylla, recognizes in this interview with BBC Mundo the great challenges encountered in the process of creating Patria, such as almost abandoned public laboratories and barely prepared for a plan of this magnitude.
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image source, Getty Images
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Maria Elena Alvarez-Buylla is director of Conacyt.
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In what phase is the Patria vaccine now?
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After the animal tests, in 2021 the phase 1 clinical study in humans was carried out, the preliminary results of which have already been published.
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They show the first data on immunogenicity, on the protective potential of this vaccine, both in its intramuscular and nasal formulation.
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Since the end of November, phase 2 has begun to evaluate its use as a booster dose in humans. That is why we need people who have already received their complete vaccination schedule, so I am calling on those who wish to participate to register online as volunteers.
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Taking into account that the stage of the pandemic in which infections led to more serious cases and that a large part of the population is already vaccinateda, aren’t they late? What is Patria going to be used for now?
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There are not enough vaccines worldwide, so this will mean having their own vaccine both for the several hundred thousand Mexicans still lagging behind in vaccination, as well as establishing generous and supportive collaborations with nations that do not have access to vaccines.
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And we must remember the booster doses that will probably continue to be necessary given the evolution of the virus and the possible loss of protection from vaccination schemes.
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In addition, this process is allowing us to articulate a series of scientific research and testing capabilities that were disjointed in Mexico. So it must be seen in the context of a process of recovering this sovereignty for the country in a strategic aspect such as technological development in the face of public health challenges.
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image source, Getty Images
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AMLO has provided information on the development of Patria in some of his daily conferences.
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Last year they announced that Patria would be ready for the population at the end of 2021, but the process is still not finished. When will it see the light?
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That date was said in a very preliminary way and then it was explained that it was difficult to specify due to the dynamics of changes that we see in the pandemic.
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For example, the proportion of people who may have protection against the virus because they have had a previous infection or because they have already been vaccinated, pose significant challenges to the recruitment of volunteers for our process.
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Yes, I can tell you that phase 2 is advancing as expected and we could be moving to the third phase of this reinforcement trial in a few weeks, a few months in any case.
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But would we be talking about what would be available throughout this year 2022?
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That would be desirable, to have it in order to have a booster vaccine.
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image source, Getty Images
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In addition to having to adapt the designs of the clinical trials both to the course of the vaccination campaign and to the changes of the pandemic itself, what have been the main challenges encountered in not meeting that announced date?
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I would say those related to technical capacity. We have had to strengthen the level 2 and 3 security laboratories at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases, which were quite abandoned. A laboratory for vaccinology studies has also been set up at the National Polytechnic Institute.
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Pilot plants have been built, which has been a challenge but at the same time a benefit to be able to produce sufficient doses in our country: 480,000 a year. And also start preparing production plants that can scale to levels of 40-80 million doses per year.
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And new public sites have had to be enabled for clinical trials, which were somehow disabled for ambitious projects, since all this was abandoned without having that vision of recovering our sovereignty in the production of biopharmaceuticals.
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Weren’t you disappointed that you didn’t have a homeland ready sooner and that the Mexican population could have benefited from it at the highest peak of the pandemic?
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Sure, that would have been desirable, of course. It would also have been desirable that the capacities of Birmex (the majority state-owned biological and reagent laboratories) had not been destroyed or dismantled.
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We had a fairly realistic assessment that Mexico was not prepared, given this state of public infrastructure, to generate its own vaccines with the required speed that countries like the United Kingdom or Cuba itself had, which is a much more small but had all the platforms they used to produce other vaccines ready.
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But Mexico totally lost that sovereign capacity. From having it and even being one of the largest vaccine producers in Latin America and producing 100% of its vaccines, it was losing it at the end of the 90s.
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image source, Getty Images
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Since then, has Mexico’s position in this sector been so bad?
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The only vaccine that Mexico fully produced when we took over the general direction of Conacyt at the beginning of this government was that for hepatitis B. And it is produced by a private Mexican laboratory.
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Everything else was stopped, like the Birmex plants. Without any capacity.
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That is why we were clear that it was a challenge. We did not have the false expectation that we would be able to produce the vaccine to respond in time and save lives to covid in the early stages of the pandemic.
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And that is why the government made that very diversified strategic decision to ensure access to different vaccines, and that it did not depend on the development times of a Mexican vaccine.
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What will be the main advantages of this vaccine for the population of Mexico?
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The first thing, and that is why it is called Patria, is that it is going to be Mexican. Then, very important and obvious, that its cost would be much less than what the Mexican government has had to pay to protect the population.
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If we can make the nasal formulation successful, that’s another obvious comparative advantage. In addition, the safety data raises very promising issues in that it appears to be a very well tolerated vaccine with less systemic effects than other vaccines.
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Another is that we will have a development in the country that we will be able to adapt, improve and update for this and other possible ills, because we believe that it will also be very useful for other biomedical applications, not just vaccinations.
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And, once again, everything involved in establishing scientific, technological, pilot plant and investment capacities to recover our sovereignty in this strategic area, as well as all the economic consequences of the development of a national industry of this type and the possibilities for innovation jointly with private companies.
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image source, Getty Images
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How much has been invested so far in this project?
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The Mexican government has invested a total of 199 million pesos (US$9.8 million). The investment prospects for 2022 depend on the adjustment of the tests that will be carried out.
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And on the other hand, Avimex has already invested hundreds of millions of pesos in the pilot and production plants.
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Many people will wonder if, considering that this Patria project started so long ago, the vaccine will be really effective on the most recent variants of the virus such as delta u ómicron.
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Regarding its protective capacity against different variants, we have as positive or even more positive perspectives compared to other vaccines.
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The advantage of having this platform in our country is that experiments are already being carried out to have the possibility of also generating variants of this vaccine.
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So it is not ruled out that, once Patria has been launched, it will continue to be updated to adapt it to new variants.
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Not only is it not ruled out, but it is an essential consideration of these developments and that is why it is essential to have it in Mexico.
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If not, one is totally depending as a country on what companies or other governments are doing. That is why we are already working in that direction.
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