Mexico City / 27.06.2022 09:30:51
By: Xavier Flowers
Illustration: Raquel Moreno, courtesy of Nexos
The number of participants for phase I in Mexico, already small (91 selected volunteers), was divided into nine subgroups to test in each of them two applications of the vaccine with three different doses and different routes of administration (intramuscular , intranasal, and intranasal plus intramuscular), thus reducing each subgroup to only 10 people. During the tests, an external event occurred that changed everything: an increase in the number of covid-19 cases in the country caused by the new delta variety that displaced the previous strains, reducing the number of participants in the clinical trial, since some of them acquired the disease, both after the application of the first dose, or after the second, which suggests that the “Patria” vaccine is ineffective for the predominant variant at that time. Thus, the number of participants went from 91 to 80. The reduction affected almost all subgroups, but notably those in which the intranasal route of administration was tested, of great importance to the Mexican scientific team, which compromises the validity of their results.
–
–
