Russia Becomes First Country to Register a Coronavirus Vaccine; Scientists Uneased
Russia has become the first country in the world to register a coronavirus vaccine for use after less than two months of human testing.
Vladimir Putin, the country’s president, announced the Health Ministry’s approval and said one of his two adult daughters has already been inoculated. According to him, the vaccine underwent the necessary tests and was shown to provide lasting immunity to the coronavirus, although Russian authorities have offered no proof to back up claims of safety or effectiveness.
“I know it has proven efficient and forms a stable immunity, we must be grateful to those who made that first step very important for our country and the entire world,” Putin said.
Putin said the vaccine has proven efficient during tests, offering a lasting immunity from the coronavirus. According to him, his daughter had a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius on the day of the first vaccine injection, and then it dropped to just over 37C on the following day. After the second shot she again had a slight increase in temperature.
“She’s feeling well and has a high number of antibodies,” Putin added. Though he didn’t specify which of his two daughters received the vaccine.
However, the move was met with international skepticism and unease as many scientists in Russia and abroad are questioning the decision to make the vaccine available for use before Phase 3 trials, which normally last for months, involve thousands of people and is the only way to prove if an experimental vaccine is safe and really works. They emphasized that rushing to offer the vaccine before final-stage testing could backfire.
“Fast-tracked approval will not make Russia the leader in the race, it will just expose consumers of the vaccine to unnecessary danger,” said Russia’s Association of Clinical Trials Organizations, in urging government officials to postpone approving the vaccine without completed advanced trials.
“The real concern is we know nothing about phase one studies how many people, we know nothing about phase two studies, how many people,” said Barry Bloom, a public health professor at Harvard University, who explained that there are many doubts that the Russians completed a third phase trial of the vaccine to test safety and efficacy.
Speaking at a Harvard press conference, he said: “It’s very hard to take this seriously unless they’ve used it in massive numbers of people and actually have the data.”
Despite not completing Phase 3 trials, Putin insisted the vaccine has undergone the necessary tests. Large-scale production of the vaccine will start in September, and mass vaccination may begin as early as October, officials said.
