The vaccine doses will arrive on time. Expert words of healthy optimism

How well founded is the alarm about the delays in the procurement of vaccines against Covid, and how useful would it be for Italy to equip itself with plants to produce them? Sergio Dompé, owner of the homonymous pharmaceutical company, leader in the biotechnology sector and famous to the general public also for the production of the anti-inflammatory Oki, throws water on the fire in an informal chat. A number of degrees and an even greater number of national and international positions of the highest level in the field of pharmaceutical research (among other things, he was also president of Farmindustria for six years and is currently head of the Task Force for Health and Sciences della Vita del B20, the Business Summit that in July will put in the hands of the G20 a package of recommendations for a more effective and sustainable post-Covid health care), Sergio Dompé warns against the controversy but above all from the fears of these hours. “We will not miss vaccines, he says to me for sure and this ping pong of daily controversies only creates anxiety.”

I insist. We in communication may be a bit clumsy, but also illustrious scientists and various experts are worried: «Look, Dompé says, the criticality was starting and we will drag it on for four, at most eight weeks. In May we will have many vaccines and from June onwards many, no expert, even in the slightest, can doubt about this. The initial delay was to be put into the bill. The pharmaceutical companies worked in the dark, to carry on they equipped the plants even before the clinical work was finished. It was a conceptual revolution ». As if a car factory built the assembly line before being sure of the model to produce? «Exactly, it was a bet and it wasn’t written that it would be won, albeit with some inevitable technical stumbling blocks. And speaking of vaccine factories, let me tell you something. I am witnessing the discussion that we should also establish them in Italy. Imagine if I disagree as an entrepreneur. But let’s use our heads. To set up one, to really run, a year goes by so much is the complication of putting together planning and thousands of plant parts, not all of which are easy to find. Then comes the tests and checks, let’s say to be fast another six months. Given the availability of vaccines that there will be in the world in eighteen, twenty-four months, we would arrive long and perhaps even old because of the infinity of variants that will appear on the scene. Today the big pharmaceutical companies are already working and investing on the post Covid “.

The post Covid? What the hell is that? «There is already evidence, but others will emerge, that the disease I am referring to in a severe form can leave consequences not only at the pulmonary level, but also at the cardiological or neuromotor level. As after a war we must be ready to treat veterans ».

Dompé rattles off the numbers of what he calls a “miracle” of the pharmaceutical industry “thanks also to the support of governments”: in a year 400,000 scientific studies on Covid have been produced and there are 4,900 authorized clinical studies, vaccines in the process of being development is 63 and about a hundred drugs, so the same can be said.

Do we mean that we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel? “Regarding the pandemic, observes Dompé, the situation could be under control within three months and totally under control within six months. This does not mean that the disease will disappear, it will become like HIV, which is still dangerous and among us, but the mix of correct behaviors and effective therapies have made it manageable ».

Precautions, vaccines and effective drugs, this is the recipe. “Of course, Dompé concludes and not just for Covid. This is a good opportunity to reorganize research worldwide and give rapid production and access to patients for innovative medicines in other fields as well. Covid, let’s not forget, has not wiped out the problem of cancer, cardiological and neurological diseases, on the contrary it has worsened them due to the minor screening carried out due to Covid “.

As if to say, every now and then a bit of pragmatic optimism doesn’t hurt.

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