The race to the finish line for creating the first coronavirus vaccine in the world is on. Several candidates from across the world manufactured by some of the best pharmaceutical minds including AstraZeneca-Oxford University, Moderna and India’s very own Bharat Biotech are going full throttle at creating a vaccine to stop the COVID-19 pandemic that has spread across the world and brought the life as we know it to a standstill.
In an emphatic fashion though, Russia is all set to roll out the vaccine this month. Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko has announced that the Gamaleya Institute, a state research facility in Moscow, has concluded the human trials for the adenovirus-based vaccine and that the paperwork was already underway to register the vaccine.
Murashko has said that while doctors and teachers will be vaccinated this month, a much larger vacciation will be launched later this year in October, Russian media has reported.
Gamaleya Institute
Unlike the manufacturers of other vaccine candidates, not surprisingly, not much is known about the Gamaleya institute or the vaccine that is being manufactured.
The clinical trials had begun in Russia mid-June at at least seven clinical investigation sites located across the country.
As per reports, 2 forms of vaccine were under investigation — a liquid and a powder form. Two participants group each consisting of 38 people participated in the initial clinical trials.
The participants were isolated in two separate hospitals in Moscow.
Director of Gamaleya Institute, Alexander Gintsburg, had famously said that the vaccines were tested on the researchers prior to the human trials, giving birth to a controversy.
This statement by Gintsburg was condemned by the Russian Association of Clinical Research Association (RACRA), which stated that it was a “crude violation of the very foundations of clinical research, Russian law and universally accepted international regulations.”
Timeline
The voices from Russia are claiming that the vaccine will be registered by August 10-12, which is much earlier than the timeline that has been shed out by researchers across the planet. Several top scientists both in India and abroad have claimed that a vaccine can only be a realistic possibility by late this year or early next year.
