Officials from outdoor fitness agencies in Russia are skeptical of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that scientists have effectively created a vaccine that confers coronavirus immunity, added the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, who has expressed doubts about the country’s testing methods.
Putin announced that the country had registered a vaccine on Tuesday, August 11 morning, saying, “We are grateful to those who took this first step, which is very vital to our country and the world at large,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The vaccine is called “Sputnik V”, by the satellite introduced through Russia to beat the United States in the area race.
Russia, according to the Johns Hopkins University Scoreboard, ranks fourth with the highest number of cases (895,691), but reported a low death toll (15,103) compared to other countries with higher case rates.
– Reuters (@Reuters) 11 August 2020
Russia developed the vaccine at the Russian Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of Gamaleya adenovirus, according to the Washington Post.
Adenoviruses are not unusual viruses that cause flu and bloodless symptoms and tend to others with more severely weakened immune systems, as well as pre-existing respiratory and central diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the development of vaccines, they are used to cause an infectious reaction, which will lead to the framework to create complex coronavirus proteins that can then “train our bodies to trip and prevent any actual SARS-CoV-2 infection before the virus wreaks havoc.” Chemistry and Engineering News.
This is a similar technique that many vaccine developers have adopted in other countries, adding researchers based in the United States. However, many of these drugs are still waiting to go through the 3 stages of verification through the CDC before registering their vaccines for broad use.
Reuters reported that Russia developed the vaccine after less than two months of human testing.
Amid questions about whether the vaccine was developed according to appropriate protocols, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, expressed concern. “I hope the Chinese and the Russians will check the vaccine before administering the vaccine to someone, because claims that a vaccine is in a position to be distributed before verification are, at best, problematic,” he said.
Aljazeera reported that a deputy director of the World Health Organization, Jarbas Barbosa, said it had “not obtained enough data on the Russian COVID-19 vaccine to compare it.”
– Barbara Malmet (B52Malmet) 11 August 2020
The controversy is whether the suspect vaccine has undergone “phase 3” trials, which the CDC defines as the time when “the vaccine is given to thousands of others and its effectiveness and protection is verified.” In a more detailed explanation, the Food and Drug Administration describes Phase 3 as when “hundreds or thousands of volunteers participate. Vaccinated Americans are for others who have won a placebo or other vaccine so that researchers can be more informed about the protection and efficacy of the vaccine to check and identify non-unusual appearance effects.”
The Russian vaccine is included in the World Health Organization’s list of phase 3 vaccine countries. According to the Washington Post, the drug is still indexed as in Phase 1.
The New York Times reported: “The Russian clinical framework that developed the vaccine, the Gamaleya Institute, has still conducted a phase 3 trial.”
Russian officials, who added Kirill Dmitriev, who runs the Russian Direct Investment Fund that funded efforts to expand vaccination in Russia, ignored all concerns. However, he necessarily admitted that the Phase 3 tests had not been conducted and said, “We will have tens of thousands more people vaccinated this way until August,” according to the Washington Post. Dmitriev also said that the country plans to conduct phase 3 trials in Russia, as well as in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and potentially Brazil (the head of state of Paraná said it was looking to start generating the vaccine in November) and the Philippines. .
And in a show of confidence, Putin alleged that one of his daughters had already won a dose of vaccine, the Journal reported.
However, several fitness officials have stated that there is a great threat of unknown long-term side effects, that their efficacy rates are accurate and other points that need to be evaluated without the final touch of the Phase 3 trial.
Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute of National and Global Health Law, told the Wall Street Journal that Putin’s announcement was “reckless.”
It is reckless and sets a deeply worrying precedent that it is perfectly general to take shortcuts, it is perfectly general to forget about ethics, it is wise to forget about foreign legal criteria in the search for a vaccine. It may just be disastrous.
“Using it in (the) general population before the effects of Phase 3 trials are studied is a gamble,” said Konstantin Chumakov of the Global Virus Network, according to the Washington Post.
Dmitriev the country had won applications from 20 countries for more than one billion doses of vaccine, the Post reported.
– The Associated Press (@AP) July 16, 2020
According to the New York Times, the Department of Defense reported testing the vaccine on infantry soldiers who volunteered (only 50, according to the Washington Post), others were skeptical that testing was conducted voluntarily. Others noted that testing healthy and trained infantry soldiers would produce skewed effects in terms of the possible side effects of the vaccine on the elderly and interactions with other drugs needed for chronic diseases (such as insulin).
In addition, the U.S., British and Canadian governments claimed that Russian agents were seeking to hack into their fitness agencies and borrow their vaccine progression data, the Times reported. According to The Hill, the director of Cybersecurity of the National Security Agency, Anne Neuberger, issued an envelope on the activities of the hacking organization called APT29 or “Cozy Bear” with alleged ties to Russia:
The National Security Agency (NSA), together with our partners, remains a company in its commitment to protecting national security by jointly issuing this critical cybersecurity notice while foreign actors continue to gain advantages from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
APT29 has a long history of targeting government, diplomatic, expert, fitness and information power organizations, so we inspire everyone to take this risk seriously and put mitigation measures into effect in the notice.
Financial analysts such as Neuberger Berman’s Kaan Nazli said that, in his view, Russia’s haste to be the first not only politically motivated but also financially important; The Wall Street Journal reported that after the announcement, the price of the ruble rose with liquid shares on the Moscow Stock Exchange.
Regarding the vaccine, its progression and its prospective effectiveness, Dmitriev accused other countries’ criticisms of being purely political: “For countries, it is difficult to recognize that, ‘How is it imaginable that Russia, which at all times has been a setback and authoritarian country, can it do it?” said Dmitriev a week ago.
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