Latin American participation in the scientific production of vaccines against COVID-19

Dear Editor,

We read the paper “Novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak: A comprehensive review of the current literature”, by Ullah et al.¹ with interest. They review current knowledge and the data corresponding to the pandemic regarding the epidemiology, prevention, treatment, clinical patterns, and diagnoses of COVID-19. During recent years, vaccines have significantly increased life expectancy, and community reactions to this have been positive. As vaccines became available, the devastating effects of many infectious diseases have vanished.² The healthcare crisis caused by COVID-19 and the impact this is now having on the world economy is placing all countries under pressure, so that several university and pharmaceutical industry research teams are accelerating their efforts to find a vaccine that will make it possible to contain the pandemic.³ Due to the urgent need to find a vaccine and the untiring work of professionals, more than 200 candidate vaccines for COVID-19 are now under study.⁴

Latin America is one of the regions with the highest mortality rate due to COVID-19, and this situation is due to conditions that create vulnerability, such as poverty, inequality and insufficient social protection, health systems, and security networks.⁵ There are also marked differences in the American continent between countries such as Canada and the United States, which are leaders in vaccine research, production, and exportation, and other countries with emerging economies such as Brazil, Mexico, or Argentina, which have local production capacities and manufacture the vaccines they need so much to satisfy their needs. On the other hand, the majority of countries in the region have not commenced the process of bioindustrialization and have little productive capacity and few strategies to become independent in biotechnology.⁶

A retrospective study was performed which examined papers on COVID-19 vaccines published and indexed in the Scopus database, whose authorship mentioned membership of Latin American institutions. It was decided to use this database due to the large number of biomedical journals which it includes, and its rigorous process of selecting journals, which made it possible to collect the most relevant studies on the variable. The search included all of the papers published and indexed from January 2020 to Ju 2021, considering the fields Article Title, Abstracts, and Keywords, using the following words as search terms: “Vaccine” OR “Vaccination” and their connection with the terms “2019-nCoV OR SARS-CoV-2 OR2019 novel coronavirus” OR COVID-19 OR “Coronavirus disease 2019”. A total of 141 published papers were found that were indexed in Scopus, with Latin American authorship and membership of Latin American institutions. The analysis included 5 types of publishable documents, especially: Papers (50.4%); Reviews (29.1%); Letter to the Editor (8.5%); Editorials (8.5%), and Notes (3.5%).

Latin American scientific production increased during the past year by 26.2%. Brazil is the country that contributed the most to scientific production about vaccines and Covid-19, representing 33.3% of Latin American production, followed by México, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile, all of which had more than 10 publications. 3 Latin American countries (the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica) had less than 1 publication (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Distribution in percentage terms of vaccine production and COVID-19 in Latin American countries.

Country	[0,2–3]2020		[0,4–5]2021
	fr.	%	fr.	%
Brazil	13	9.2	34	24.1
Mexico	10	7.1	15	10.6
Colombia	8	5.7	8	5.7
Argentina	4	2.8	10	7.1
Chile	5	3.5	6	4.3
Ecuador	2	1.4	3	2.1
Peru	2	1.4	2	1.4
Cuba	1	.7	3	2.1
Panama	0	.0	3	2.1
Uruguay	2	1.4	0	.0
Venezuela	0	.0	2	1.4
Dominican Republic	1	.7	0	.0
Puerto Rico	0	.0	1	.7
Costa Rica	1	.7	0	.0
Bolivia	1	.7	1	.7
Jamaica	0	.0	1	.7
Paraguay	2	1.4	0	.0
Total	52	36.9	89	63.1

fr: frequency; %: percentage.

All of the above reflects the inequality between Latin American countries in terms of their scientific production on vaccines against COVID-19. It is fundamental for all countries to be able to develop more research that contributes to mitigating the adverse effects of the pandemic. Even so, vaccination requires studies that aim to characterize and analyze the range of events associated with each type of COVID vaccine. Latin America needs to be at the forefront and make a significant contribution to these studies.

Financing

This work was undertaken without external financing.

Authors’ contributions

Conceptualization, data processing and formal analysis: Ronald M. Hernández

Participation in the design and text of the work: Miguel A. Saavedra-López

Participation in the design and text of the work: Xiomara M. Calle-Ramirez

The named authors accept their individual responsibility for the totality of the work presented for publication.

Conflict of interests

The authors have no conflict of interests to declare.