CONACYT sought to test the “Patria” vaccine in the military, Army refused to offer volunteers

The Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) rejected the proposal of the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) for its agents to participate in the research protocol of the Mexican-made vaccine “Patria” against Covid-19.

(Latinus) After two years of health emergency and with no progress in the development of the vaccine, Conacyt officials requested support from Sedena to carry out recruitment campaigns in Oaxaca, Jalisco, Nuevo León, and Michoacán, for the second phase of the “Patria” vaccine. Not only that. The agency requested that military personnel be invited to participate in its study.

The report of the virtual meeting held on July 8th by members of the Mexican Army and Air Force Research Center (Cidefam) and Conacyt officials, to which Latinus had access after the hacktivist group “Guacamaya” penetrated the SEDENA servers and databases, describes this as follows.

“A call is sought to be made to all SEDENA personnel who meet the criteria to participate in the study, in order for them to register to participate voluntarily,” states point seven of the CIDEFAM-FS-3594 report.

According to Sedena’s response, Conacyt’s requests were rejected for two reasons: the collaboration agreement between the two agencies is for scientific research, not for recruiting volunteers.

“It is not favorable as a project for development under the guidelines of the Framework Collaboration Agreement with Conacyt, because it does not involve scientific and technological development activities, in which researchers with specialized knowledge in molecular biology and immunology have to intervene.

All military personnel and their dependents have a complete vaccination schedule, so it would not be a population that should be included to participate in its development”, determined the Sedena.

In April 2021, María Elena Álvarez-Buylla, director of Conacyt, said in the morning conference that the “Patria” vaccine would be ready and available to the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) for approval in emergency use in December of that year. Ten months later, she is still looking for volunteers to finish testing the vaccine in humans.

TYT Newsroom