Mexico Reaches Agreements for Advanced COVID-19 Vaccines

Through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico has reached significant agreements to access the COVID-19 vaccine developments of three different companies: AstraZeneca, Pfizer and CanSino Biologics. During Monday’s morning press conference, the three agreements were signed through COVAX, which is the pillar of access to COVID-19 tools. With this agreement, companies have agreed to undertake Phase 3 clinical trials in Mexico.

The Minster of Foreign Affairs declared that the government will receive between 15.5 million and up to 34.4 million doses from Pfizer and announced that it is negotiating another agreement with China's CanSino Biologics to obtain an additional 35 million doses. According to a post shared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Mexico is in the same conditions as the US, the EU and other countries in the world, since we have already secured the necessary doses.”

In Which Phase Are Those Developments?

AstraZeneca’s development is being developed alongside the University of Oxford and is currently going through combined clinical Phase 2 and 3 trials to determine the efficacy of the vaccine. Phase 2 tests the vaccine’s safety and ability to simulate the immune system, while Phase 3 determines the actual efficiency of the vaccine to protect people against COVID-19. Phase 3 is expected to reveal if the development has rare side effects. During the first days of September, this company paused its global trials after detecting a side effect that caused transverse mellitus in a volunteer. Days after, the trials around the world resumed except in the US, where the FDA keeps studying the case. This development falls under the category of viral vector vaccines, “vaccines that contain viruses engineered to carry coronavirus genes. Some viral vector vaccines enter cells and cause them to make viral proteins. Other viral vectors slowly replicate, carrying coronavirus proteins on their surface.”

Similar to AstraZeneca, Pfizer coalition with BioNTech for a COVID-19 vaccine development is going through combined Phase 2 and 3 trials. These coalition had two developments on trial at first and decided to move on with the one that presented minimal side effects. To date, this development is expected to show results this month. If positive, Pfizer announced the production of over 1.3 billion doses for a worldwide reach by the end of 2021. Pfizer’s development falls under the category of genetic vaccines, which are defined as “vaccines that deliver one or more of the coronavirus’s own genes into our cells to provoke an immune response.”

CanSino Biologics worked alongside The Institute of Biology and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences from China and it began Phase 3 trials in August. This development already has approval for limited use from the Chinese military to be used on soldiers. This development is also a viral vector vaccine.