Scientists issue warning after Russia approves world first COVID vaccine
Russia on Tuesday became the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, a move that was met with international skepticism because the shots have only been tested on a dozen people.
President Vladimir Putin announced the Health Ministry’s approval and said one of his two adult daughters already was inoculated.
He said the vaccine has gone through the required tests and proven to provide lasting immunity to the coronavirus, despite Russian authorities offering zero proof to back those claims.
“I know it has proven efficient and forms a stable immunity,” Putin said. “We must be grateful to those who made that first step very important for our country and the entire world.”
However, scientists in Russia and around the world have issued a warning, saying that speeding up the vaccine process before final-stage testing could have implications.
Vaccines must go through a Phase 3 trial - which involves tens of thousands of people and can take months - and is the only way to prove if an experimental vaccine is safe and works.
To compare, vaccines entering final-stage testing in the US require studies of 30,000 people each.
“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 Organisations as they urge the government to postpone the approval process until advanced trials are conducted.
While Russian officials have said large-scale production of the vaccine wasn’t scheduled until September, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said vaccination of doctors could start as early as this month.
Mass vaccination may begin as early as October.
“We expect tens of thousands of volunteers to be vaccinated within the next months,” Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolled the vaccine, told reporters.
The vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow with assistance from Russia’s Defense Ministry uses a different virus called adenovirus.
It has been modified to contain the genes for the “spike” protein that coats the coronavirus, as a way to prime the body to recognise if a real COVID-19 infection comes along.
The technology is similar to vaccines being developed by China’s CanSino Biologics and Britain’s Oxford University, but unlike those companies, scientists in Russia have not published any scientific information about how the vaccine has performed.