Moscow – Russia was on Tuesday the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, a move that has provoked skepticism and unease abroad, as vaccines have only been studied in dozens of people.
President Vladimir Putin announced the approval of the Ministry of Health and said that one of his two adult daughters had already been vaccinated. He claimed that the vaccine had been tested and had been shown to have lasting immunity against coronavirus, the Russian government did not provide evidence to support claims of protection or efficacy.
“I know it has shown effective and strong immunity to bureaucracy,” Putin said. “We will have to be grateful to those who took this vital first step for our country and the world.”
However, scientists in Russia and other countries have sounded the alarm, saying that rushing to offer the vaccine before final testing can backfire. What’s called a phase 3 trial, which reaches tens of thousands of people and can take months, is the only way to determine if an experimental vaccine is safe and working.
By comparison, vaccines entering the last phase of testing in the United States require studies on another 30,000 people each. Two candidate vaccines have already begun these mass studies, and are expected to begin 3 more until the fall.
“Accelerated approval will not make Russia the race leader, it will only inform vaccine consumers of the danger,” the Russian Association of Clinical Trial Organizations said, urging government officials to delay the approval of the vaccine without completing the complex trials.
While Russian officials said large-scale production of the vaccine is uns scheduled until September, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said vaccination from doctors could begin as soon as this month. Authorities say they will be closely monitored after injections. Mass vaccination may begin from October.
“We expect tens of thousands of volunteers to be vaccinated in the coming months,” Kirill Dmitriev, managing director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that funded the vaccine, told reporters Kirill Dmitriev.
The vaccine developed through the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow with the Russian Ministry of Defense uses another virus – the non-unusual adenovirus that causes the non-unusual without blood – which has been changed to bring the genes of the “peak” protein that covers the coronavirus, as a way to prepare the framework to recognize if a genuine infection occurs with COVID-19.
It is a generation similar to a vaccine developed through CanSino Biologics in China and the British University of Oxford and AstraZeneca; however, unlike these companies, Russian scientists have published clinical data on the functionality of the vaccine in animal testing or early human studies.
Dmitriev said that even if Russian doctors and teachers start vaccinating, complex trials are expected to begin Wednesday, involving “several thousand people” and several countries, adding the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and in all likelihood Brazil. .
The Associated Press may place documentation in russian Ministry of Health records indicating that permission had been granted to begin complex trials. The branch responded to a request for comment.
Putin said one of his daughters had won two doses and had minor side effects, such as mild fever, and that she “felt intelligent and had a large number of antibodies.” It’s unclear if she’s one of the volunteers at the studio.
The Ministry of Health said on a Tuesday that the vaccine deserves to provide coronavirus immunity for up to two years, increasing its delight with vaccines made with similar technology.
However, scientists around the world have warned that even if candidate vaccines are shown to work, it will take longer to say how long coverage will last.
“The collateral damage resulting from the release of any less effective vaccine and less that would insurmountably aggravate our existing problems,” said Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London on Tuesday.
The World Health Organization suggested that all vaccine applicants go through full stages of testing prior to deployment, and said Tuesday that it is in contact with Russian scientists and that it “looks forward to reviewing” knowledge of the Russian study. Experts have warned that vaccines that are not well-proven can cause harm in many tactics: harming health, creating a false sense of safety, or undermining confidence in vaccines.
Becoming the first country in the world to approve a vaccine is a matter of national prestige for the Kremlin, as it seeks to assert Russia’s symbol as a world power. Putin has continually praised Russia’s effective reaction to the epidemic in televised speeches to the nation, while some of Moscow’s most sensitive officials, adding the country’s prime minister and Putin’s spokesman, have been infected.
And last month, the United States, Britain, and Canada accused Russia of hackers to borrow vaccine studies from Western laboratories. Russia has denied any involvement.
Russia has recorded 897599 cases of coronavirus, adding up to 15131 deaths.
The headmaster of the Gamaleya Institute, Alexander Gintsburg, raised his eyebrows in May when he said that he and researchers had tried the vaccine on their own before human studies began.
These trials began on June 17 with 76 volunteers. Half is injected with one vaccine in liquid form and the other part with a vaccine in the form of a soluble powder. Some members of the first organization were recruited into the military, which raised the possibility that the army would have felt stressed to participate. The declared check completed before this month.
“It’s too early to assess whether he paints, whether he paints or not,” said Dr Michael Head, a senior global fitness researcher at the University of Southampton in England.
This is Russia’s first debatable vaccine. Putin boasted that Russian scientists delivered an Ebola vaccine that “proved to be the ultimate in the world” and “made a genuine contribution to the fight against Ebola in Africa.” However, there is little evidence that either of the two Ebola vaccines approved in Russia has been widely used in Africa. In 2019, any of the vaccines were indexed through WHO as “candidate vaccines”.
AP editors Maria Cheng in London and Lauran Neergaard in Alexandria, Virginia, contributed to the report.