Clinical trials are now well under way with the new ‘made-in-Spain’ Covid vaccine – 30 participants have been recruited and at least six of them now jabbed in a crucial step closer to a home-grown inoculation being on the shelves.
Hipra Laboratories in Girona is developing a formula which uses two different Coronavirus strains, to increase immunity across the board and also to newer, more contagious and more aggressive types.
The first doses have been administered this week at Girona’s Josep Trueta Hospital and Barcelona’s Hospital Clinic, according to Dr Marga Nadal, head of the Girona Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBGI) and Dr Àlex Soriano, head of the infectious diseases unit at Hospital Clinic.
Hipra researchers hope the two-pronged attack – or four, if each end of the ‘S’ is considered a ‘prong’ – will generate an even more potent immune response, and a more ‘flexible’ and ‘versatile’ set of antibodies capable of adapting to repel current and future viral mutations, stopping the SARS-CoV-2 from evolving to be able to resist the defensive front mounted by the human organism.