Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that his country has obtained a coronavirus vaccine, becoming the first country in the world to do so. We have to prove that a vaccine is safe and effective.
Last week, the World Health Organization reiterated the need for caution and directly warned Russia not to deviate from normal testing to ensure safety.
This resolution is a victory claim for Putin. However, no peer-reviewed evidence has yet emerged showing that the approved vaccine is safe.
“It works quite effectively, the bureaucracy is solid and, I repeat, it has passed all the mandatory tests,” Putin told a meeting Tuesday morning, as quoted by the New York Times. He also thanked the scientists for those efforts and for “this a very vital first step for our country and for the world as a whole in general. “
Putin also announced that one of his daughters had been vaccinated. Officials also told CNN that at least 20 countries and some the United States have expressed interest in the vaccine.
The vaccine has been approved, but phase 3 trials, the peak level of testing involving tens of thousands of participants, don’t begin until tomorrow.
This is a huge wake-up call for experts. “The collateral damage of the spread of an unsafe and effective vaccine would exacerbate our existence in insurmountable ways,” Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, told the Science Media Centre.
“This is a reckless and foolish decision,” Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology at University College London, told the Science Media Centre.
“Mass vaccination with a poorly tested vaccine is unethical,” Balloux added. “Any Russian vaccination campaign would be disastrous, either because of its negative effects on health, but also because it would further delay the uptake of vaccines among the population. “”
READ MORE: Russia approves vaccine ahead of trials [The New York Times]
Learn more about vaccines: Fauci says he’s ‘cautiously optimistic’ about COVID vaccine this year
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