RPP Verify | Alejandro Muñante: “You have to be aware that [la vacuna de la COVID-19] es experimental” [FALSO]

The congressman from Popular Renovation Alejandro Muñante presented an official letter to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers questioning the measure of the use of vaccination card as a requirement to access closed spaces. In an interview with “Ampliación de Noticias”, the party spokesman also said that “constitutional rights would be being violated.”

During his argument, Alejandro Muñante assured that there are people who still have doubts about the efficacy of vaccines against COVID-19. “What I refer to in the profession is young people (…) they have been violated in the right to work, the right to freedom of conscience, because you also have to be aware that this is an experimental vaccine “.

His statements were subjected to verification.

Information to verify: the vaccines used against COVID-19 are experimental.

Result: FALSE

[1] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the United States points out that stages of development of new vaccines They include an exploratory phase, a preclinical phase, a clinical development phase, and an approval, manufacturing, and quality control phase. Immunologist Jorge More Bayona tells RPP Noticias that For the development of a vaccine, the agent that causes a disease is first identified.

Then it goes to laboratory studies where the characteristics of this agent are determined. With this information, tests are carried out on experimental animals. TAll this within a preclinical trial framework, because it does not involve human testing. “With promising results at this level, we went on to experimentation in humans, a stage called clinical trials. This is where the stages to determine the safety of the product enter, that the administration of the vaccine candidate generates an immune response; and that it generates protection. in individuals “, he maintains.

Then, those who prepare these tests apply to international regulatory entities to receive approval for use, after evaluation by groups of experts. They confirm that the vaccine candidate is safe, generates immunity and protection. After that, if the use authorization is given. In the context of the pandemic, for emergency use. And it is already beginning to give full authorizations.

“Once the vaccines are authorized, the candidate is called a vaccine,” says More Bayona.

[2] This is reaffirmed in the published article by the investigating physician Percy Mayta-Tristán in the Peruvian Journal of Experimental Medicine and Public Health. There, Mayta-Tristán does a study of the use of an investigational product outside of a clinical trial, specifically studying the case ‘Vacunagate’. There it makes the difference between an experimental vaccine and an approved vaccine: referring to those who were vaccinated before the experimental vaccine was approved and available as a vaccine for emergency use in Peru.

In short, when the vaccine was in the clinical trials stage (as at the time of the ‘Vacunagate’) it was an experimental vaccine. We even referred to her as a “vaccine candidate.” Later, when it received approval for its emergency use in Peru, it was no longer an “experimental” vaccine, after learning its efficacy from the results of the tests. Therefore, the congressman’s statement is false.

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