Russian and American vaccines have divided the global market
The Russian COVID-19 vaccine is showing interest in Latin America and Asia, while the American-German development will be purchased in the US and the EU.
A PolitNavigator correspondent reports this in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, Nikolai Bespalov, development director of the analytical company RNC Pharma Nikolai Bespalov, said when answering the question why the news about the creation of a vaccine against coronavirus infection by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech caused such a stir, although back in the summer the world’s first such drug was registered in the Russian Federation.
He noted that there are several drug development centers in the world, including Russia and the United States, and each of these centers has allies with whom strong economic and political ties have been established.
“It is clear that US satellite countries, for various reasons, including political ones, are unlikely to buy the Russian drug. Therefore, it is not surprising that they reacted very quickly to the news about the successful trials of their own vaccine. However, if we remember August, the reaction to the registration of Sputnik was in some respects even brighter than now. Still, the Russian drug was the first to undergo the registration procedure, and the question of the availability of an alternative is far from idle,” says Bespalov.
The publication asked how the global vaccine market will now be divided.
“It’s already divided. Each development company has partners with whom preliminary supply agreements are concluded; many of these agreements were concluded at the stage of drug development. Everything is traditional here: Latin America and a number of Asian countries are showing interest in our vaccine, and the European Union and the United States are showing interest in the American drug.
So you shouldn’t expect any changes now, unless force majeure happens - say, some drug turns out to be unsafe or ineffective. But if the vaccine successfully passes the clinical trial stage, then serious problems should not arise,” says the expert.
He believes that the news about successful trials of a Western vaccine will not affect the prospects for exporting the Russian drug.
“All this will definitely not affect the prospects of Sputnik in any way. To stop the development of the pandemic, a huge amount of vaccine is needed. And producing such a number of doses in a limited time is a task that no single manufacturer, no matter how large, can accomplish alone. Therefore, the more drugs there are and the more mass production becomes, the better for everyone.
But by and large, all this news around the Pfizer vaccine still exists only in our heads. The reality remains the same. The incidence is at the same level, mass production is still far away, and more than 300 million people live in the United States alone. In addition, their drug is very difficult from the point of view of transportation: it must be stored at a temperature no higher than -70 degrees, which is a very difficult task for the average clinic in the USA or Europe.
In addition, no one has yet assessed how long immunity will last after vaccination with this drug. Therefore, nothing fundamentally new or interesting has happened yet,” the specialist said.
He also says that in Russia and other countries where vaccine development is underway, mass vaccination will start no earlier than February-March 2021.
“And if we talk about the whole world, then at best at the end of next year,” Bespalov concluded.
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