In a symbolic act with the presence of President Iván Duque, putting together the pieces of a puzzle was the way to start the construction works of the plant to manufacture vaccines in Colombiain a lot of 35,000 square meters, in the municipality of Rionegro, east of Antioch.
Although this was the formal beginning, the walls will not begin to rise until the Urban Curator approves the license that has already been filed, after the Mayor’s Office of Planning gave the endorsement that determines the use of the land.
For now, Vaxtheraa Grupo Sura company, reported that the design of the plant complies with national and international regulations on good manufacturing practices (GMP).
The construction of the plant will be carried out in two stages. The first will have 10,000 square meters, which will house the so-called fill and finish, potency and toxicity laboratories, storage centers and service buildings. In the second stage, production units, the administrative block and the research unit will be integrated.
fill and finish This means that the company, initially, will do what is known in the industry as the filling and completion of the biological packaging process, for which a capacity of 100 million doses per year and the generation of between 500 and 1,000 jobs.
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It means then that, in this first part, projected for mid-2023, the country will not yet produce its own vaccinesbut different agreements will be negotiated with the National Government and international alliances to strengthen biotechnological capacity and knowledge transfer.
Colombia begins the construction of the first vaccine plant. Vaxthera, of the Sura group, which will have a production capacity in its initial phase of 100 million vaccines.
Photo:Jaiver Nieto Alvarez / ETCE
Jorge Emilio Osorio, president of Vaxthera, indicated that there are already agreements with the company Providence, from Canada, and the Serum Institute, from India, among other companies in the world, for technology transfer of different vaccine productions, taking into account that biologicals will not only be developed to combat covid-19, but also dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, influenza and zika.
“We are going to have finished the unit of fill and finish in 2023, then comes a licensing process, appraisal by Invimathat we have all the production standards, and by the end of 2023 we will be making vaccines in Colombia,” Osorio said.
The plant is part of the Ministry of Health’s 10-year plan, which is divided into three stages: the first is training in filling vaccines, the second is local production, and the third is research and development to generate vaccines.
Vaxthera stressed that this company is developing a vcradle against the coronavirus called Univax, which is designed to combat the different variants of covid-19 and has already shown favorable results in preclinical studies. It has been tested, for example, in the delta variant, but it remains to be done in the omicron.
“This will be an excellent booster vaccine and we hope to be in phase 1 and 2 clinical studies after the second half of the year,” Osorio said.
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Why a plant?
Fernando Ruiz, Minister of Health, pointed out that the fundamental thing is to recover the sanitary sovereignty that the country lost 22 years agowhen the National Institute of Health laboratory that produced its own vaccines was closed.
The investment in this project was 54 million dollars, and the objective is to face the different existing health emergencies and to be prepared for emerging diseases.
Precisely, for the expert Diego Rojas Vahos, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Science and Research (Cecif) of the CES University, this aspect was the one that evidenced the covid-19 pandemic: Colombia depends to a high extent on imports, not only of vaccines, but of masks and medical supplies.
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As President Iván Duque mentioned, at the time the decision was made to stop producing vaccines because it was cheaper to buy them abroad.
We felt that pain of having to negotiate, having so many complexities that not only Colombia suffered, but the world, in a country that has stopped producing vaccines
“Yes, it is cheaper, but it does not give us pharmaceutical sovereignty or independence for a crisis like the pandemic, which can be repeated, for example, in an environmental catastrophe, or in border closures that can occur due to economic blockades. In a war, with two or three neighboring countries, we would also have closed borders and we would need to supply necessities”, explained Rojas.
The Ministry of Health pointed out that one of the most complex issues is negotiating vaccines with other countrieswhich began in the second half of 2020, when the National Government was managing the necessary vaccines for Colombia, which at this time are almost 97 million vaccines insured.
“We felt that pain of having to negotiate, having so many complexities that not only Colombia suffered, but the world, in a country that has stopped producing vaccines. In January we started this National Vaccine Production Plan in the ministry, which we presented to the council of ministers and from which we obtained its approval. It is an ambitious plan: to go from having a country without sovereignty to a country with sovereignty in the production of vaccines (…). We depend on the Covax system, which is where it is left over, it is not given away. It is collected by the World Health Organization and distributed to the countries”, explained Minister Ruiz.
MELISSA ALVAREZ CORREA
Editor of EL TIEMPO – Medellín
On Twitter: @Melissalvarez3
