Can Covid-19 Vaccine Production Kill Over Half A Million Sharks?

Illustrations (twitter @Sharkallies)

JAKARTA - There are many ways that researchers have taken to be able to make a COVID-19 vaccine, one of which is by using natural oils as raw materials. Unfortunately the raw material from this natural oil called Squalene comes from shark liver extract.

This immediately led to pros and cons from many parties, one of which was a conservation group, the Shark Allies, based in California. They firmly oppose the use of Squalene, because thousands of these marine predators will be killed just to get their liver oil for the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Squalene or shark liver oil itself is an adjuvant and is commonly used in the medical world. This ingredient increases the effectiveness of the vaccine by creating a stronger immune response.

According to a Telegraph report, Monday, September 28, British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is currently using squalene in the production of the flu vaccine. They also plan to produce one billion doses of this adjuvant for potential use in a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus

Shark Allies said that around 250 thousand sharks would be killed if the world's population received one dose of Covid-19 vaccine containing shark liver oil. This means that if two doses of vaccine are needed for the global population, which the researchers say, this will increase to half a million and more than thousands of sharks will be killed just to extract one ton of squalene.

Especially with the many pharmaceutical companies that are competing to immediately produce the COVID-19 vaccine, some of which use squalene as a raw material for their products. Even out of the 162 vaccine candidates evaluated by WHO, Shark Allies said 17 of them used squalene.

It is feared that Shark Allies, if one of these pharmaceutical companies is approved by WHO, of course the demand for shark liver extract to produce squalene will increase regardless of the increasingly vulnerable shark population today.

"Harvesting something from wild animals will never be sustainable, especially because sharks do not breed in large numbers," said Shark Allies executive director Stefanie Brendl, as quoted by Metro.uk.

Did you know that shark liver oil (squalene) is a common ingredient in vaccines? As it stands 5 COVID-19 vaccine developers are even using it, despite EXISTING sustainable alternatives. Help us send a message to them, please sign and share far and wide! https://t.co/nkx2kZPzmh pic.twitter.com/LwruuMXU0g

- Shark Allies (@SharkAllies) September 11, 2020

Brendl himself does not intend to block the production of a vaccine from the corona virus. Instead, they urged pharmaceutical companies to try to use Squalene which is not from animals.

Not to mention that it is not known how long the pandemic will end. This will certainly lead to more and more sharks being killed for vaccine development.

"There is so much unknown about how big and how long this pandemic will last, then how many versions we have to go through, so that if we continue to use sharks the number of sharks being taken for this product could be very high, year after year," said Brendl.

To avoid the threat to shark populations, they encouraged scientists to test alternatives to squalene. An alternative to a synthetic version made from fermented sugarcane.