Argentina approves its first COVID-19 vaccine - Buenos Aires Herald buenosairesherald.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from buenosairesherald.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Latin American countries not only developed their own covid vaccine prototypes but also rolled them out. Martín De Ambrosio reports on a region taking its first steps towards vaccine security
When the pandemic shook the world in 2020, Argentina, like many countries, went into full lockdown. Juliana Cassataro, a researcher at the National University of General San Martín, wondered what her team could do to help. The answer was obvious for a researcher specialising in oral vaccines: make one.
“From the beginning we planned to make it as a booster we realised that we couldn’t compete with developers with millions and millions of dollars and the support of bigger nation states,” says Cassataro. Her team received a small grant of $100 000 from the Argentine ministry of science in May 2020 to design a prototype based on Cassataro’s specialism: recombinant protein vaccines.
Confidence was not high. Colleagues and politicians told them to give up it was not feasible to produce a
Argentine researchers are about to complete de development of the ARVAC Cecilia Grierson Covid-19 vaccine, which is why volunteers are needed for the 2/3 trial phase, it was reported in Buenos Aires. The new drug is expected to be cleared by mid-2023.