President Vladimir Putin said Russia had legalized the use of the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine and hoped to begin mass inoculation soon, even before clinical trials ended.
“The first recording was made,” Putin said Tuesday at a televised government meeting, adding that one of his daughters had already won the vaccine. “I hope we can start mass production soon.”
The resolution paves the way for the widespread use of the vaccine among the Russian population, with production starting next month, the trials may last until January. Medical staff may also begin receiving the drug until the end of the month, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said at the meeting.
The announcement represents a propaganda coup for the Kremlin amid a global race to expand vaccines that oppose the coronavirus pandemic and accusations that Russian hackers have tried to borrow foreign drug research. The disease has killed some 750,000 people, inflamed more than 20 million and paralyzed national economies. Companies like AstraZeneca Plc and Moderna Inc. are still conducting the latest testing of their vaccines in studies expected to produce effects soon.
“Making a vaccine before publishing something in a peer-reviewed journal is a violation of the basic basic vaccine,” said Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at New York University School of Medicine. “What they’re doing is harmful and incredibly immoral.”
Russia has defined how it foresees development, naming the Sputnik V vaccine in a nod to the good fortune of the Soviet Union by launching the world’s first satellite in 1957.
Russia has nearly 900,000 people diagnosed with Covid-19, the fourth highest case shown in the world. There were more than 27,000 coronavirus-related deaths in the current quarter, according to the federal Statistics Service’s knowledge released this week.
The speed with which the vaccine obtained regulatory approval has generated criticism, and an agreement by multinational pharmaceutical corporations rated the hasty record as risky.
“This is a Putin political resolution, so you can say that Russia is the first in the race to expand a Covid-19 vaccine,” said Svetlana Zavidova, executive director of the Russian Association of Clinical Trial Organizations. “I cannot understand why Russia wants to build this village of Potemkin.”
The vaccine is being developed through the Gamaleya Moscow Institute, the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Sovereign Direct Investment Fund, which said it was in Phase 3 trials, the most recent step in which thousands of others are vaccinated to determine their suitability for employment. A World Health Organization database lists the vaccine as only in Phase 1, the earliest stage.
RDIF leader Kirill Dmitriev downplayed the complaint that developers have published peer-reviewed results.
“This vaccine platform has been attempted over the past six years, making it very different from many cutting-edge approaches used by other players,” Dmitriev said in an interview on Bloomberg TV, adding that a hundred other people were concerned in the first two phases. Array “President Putin commented that his daughter had been vaccinated. I myself, my wife and my parents were also vaccinated.
RDIF will produce more than 500 million doses consistent with the year in five countries, and mass vaccinations in Russia will begin in October, according to Dmitriev.
The fund plans to conduct Phase 3 clinical trials in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, India and the Philippines, on the Sputnik V website. Mass production is aligned in India, South Korea, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Cuba, he said, with at least 20 countries interested in stocking.
WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said last week that all vaccine applicants adhere to established practices and comprehensive clinical trials before being widely disseminated.
The Russian candidate is a viral vector vaccine based on a human adenovirus, such as the bloodless virus, fused with the complex SARS CoV-2 protein to stimulate an immune reaction and is developed through CanSino Biologics in China.
“Giving other difficult people the first does not generate trust, illustrates how unfair and unsustainable this assignment is,” said NYU’s Caplan. “This indicates the disruptions that are maintained when politics is the engine of vaccine science.”
– With Yuliya Fedorinova and Dina Khrennikova