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There will not be 6.9 million doses of vaccines for covid-19, but 16 million that Portugal will receive during the year 2021. The president of Infarmed, Rui Ivo, explained this Thursday during the Infarmed meeting the way in three stages, by phases, how these vaccines will arrive in Portugal. The PUBLIC confirmed with Infarmed that the total figure amounts to 15 million and that they are vaccines purchased through the European Commission. These figures will be updated as the European Union formalizes new contracts with pharmaceutical companies, explained Hugo Grilo, press officer for the Portuguese agency that regulates medicines. At the end of Thursday, Prime Minister António Costa announced that Portugal should buy 16 million doses.
This amount is more than double the 6.9 million doses announced by the Council of Ministers in August, when the European Union had only formalized a prior agreement to purchase vaccines, with the Astra-Zeneca – the basis of the EU strategy to accelerate the work of biotechnology companies that are developing vaccines in record time against new ones coronavirus and, at the same time, negotiate the centralized purchase, at a better price, of immunization COVID-19 enough for all Europeans.
These 16 million doses of vaccines, which will allow 8 million Portuguese to be vaccinated on the assumption that most vaccines involve taking two doses, do not yet include the 405 million doses that the EU has agreed to buy from the biotech company. German CureVAC on the 12th. It is the fifth of these contracts formalized by the EU. But only vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency will be purchased and distributed to the Twenty-seven, including Portugal. Meanwhile, the EU has backed the acquisition of at least 1.4 billion doses, with the possibility of buying another 400 million. But that doesn’t mean you buy that much, you don’t even know the clinical trial results yet, just press releases about preliminary results.
The EU works well
“This is a good example that the European Union can work well. It means entering into risk management contracts with each of the companies that are developing vaccines with the potential to reach the market ”, says Helder Mota Filipe, professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Lisbon and former president of Infarmed.
The next problem, and one that worries Mota Filipe, has to do with the Portuguese logistical capacity to distribute and deliver covid-19 vaccines to all citizens. “This is the responsibility of each country. There is one that needs refrigeration at very low temperatures, and it is necessary to ensure that the whole country has a network that guarantees the cold, otherwise the vaccine cannot be used ”, he says. “There are freezers that reach temperatures of minus 80 degrees Celsius in certain hospitals, some research centers, but they do not exist in all health centers,” he exemplifies. “And it is necessary not only that they exist, but also that they have space to store the amount of vaccines that come,” he warns.
Faced with announcements by politicians that vaccines may start arriving at the beginning of the year, Mota Filipe hesitates. “I don’t see, maybe it is in the secret of the gods and there is a commission that is designing everything. But no politician can guarantee at this point that we should already have the vaccines in January, because there are still many questions, many ‘yes’, “he says. “If all the data from the clinical trials of the vaccines are correct, if there are no doubts from the evaluators, etc. How in the middle of November can we make sure that by January we can do everything possible to get the vaccine circulating and reaching risk groups? “
Ultra-cool units, for example, are expensive, but this isn’t even the most complicated. “The most important thing is that there is going to be a great demand worldwide, and what I fear is that once again, as with fans and masks, when Portugal needs to contact the suppliers of this equipment, to say ‘ no, we don’t, because everything we had has already been bought. ‘ We are learning little from our mistakes, ”he laments.
Nor should we expect that the number of vaccines promised now is something set in stone, which cannot change. “It is necessary to confirm that they are safe, not because there is a lack of quality in the process, but because sometimes the final result of the investigation is not positive. And among those that had the necessary security, there may be some that are more effective than others, some that give a longer duration of immunization than others, or some that are more demanding in terms of handling than others ”, underlines Miguel Castanho, of the Institute of Molecular Medicine of the University. from Lisbon.
“In addition, there are vaccines with very different operating principles, there are at least three, which gives us the theoretical possibility of making a more complex vaccination strategy, using more than one type of vaccine,” he says. For example, resorting to a first vaccine based on antibodies, which provides very rapid protection, explains the scientist, and “opting for a second vaccination period, with another vaccine, which provides longer-term immunity.”
It is true that this cannot be done in this first year, in the first days in which there is a rush to stop the circulation of the new coronavirus among humans, but you have to think of this as a vaccination strategy, says Miguel Castanho. “It’s not like buying a car and the person goes and chooses, they are the only one and that’s it. It can be seen that a vaccine is more suitable for one age group or another subgroup of the population. Someone will have to analyze the different options available and assess which is the best for each circumstance. A country can even buy two or three different types of vaccines, combine them with each other ”, for greater effectiveness.
