Russia Announces World’s First Covid-19 Vaccine

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How does the Russian Covid-19 vaccine work?

Nearly nine months into the Covid-19 outbreak, Russia became the first country to grant regulatory approval to a Covid-19 vaccine for civilian use, President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday.
He described it as “a very important step for the world”.
Putin’s daughter got a shot of the vaccine

Gam-COVID-Vac Lyo vaccine Developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute in collaboration with the country’s defence ministry.

Russia’s vaccine is based on the DNA of a SARS-CoV-2 type adenovirus, a common cold virus.
The vaccine uses the weakened virus to deliver small parts of a pathogen and stimulate an immune response.

But this has led to scepticism regarding its safety and effectiveness,
Since it is being approved for civilian use even before clinical trials are completed.
The superfast speed at which the Russian vaccine has been produced, eclipsing front runners like Oxford-AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer,
Has led to experts flagging that the government has cut corners and may put citizens at risk.
What has raised the hackles of experts is the fact that human trials for the vaccine, which takes several years in normal circumstances,
Have been completed in less than two months.

So far, Russia has only made public the results of phase-I of the clinical trials, which they claimed were successful and produced the desired immune response.
In mid-July, Russia’s TASS news agency said the Defence Ministry had claimed that none of the volunteers had reported any complaints and experienced no side-effects.
Phase I human trials started on June 17 among 76 volunteers, with most being recruited from the military.
Half were injected with a vaccine in liquid form and the other half with a vaccine that came as soluble powder.
According to the news report, the phase-II trials were started on July 13.
On August 3, Russian media reported that Gamaleya Institute had completed clinical trials.
The reports, however, did not specify whether all the three stages of clinical trials were over, or only stage-II was completed.
Phase II trials usually take a few months to be completed.

Russia, however, has claimed that this was made possible due to the fact that its Covid-19 vaccine candidate
Closely resembled a vaccine for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) disease, caused by another coronavirus, that had already been tested extensively.

The head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev, who has bankrolled the project, said in an interview that-
More than 20 countries had shown interest in producing the Russian vaccine.
“Our foreign partners express great interest in producing this vaccine in their countries.
There is great interest from Brazil, from India, from many other countries that are very much looking forward to the Russian vaccine.
More than five countries are now actively working with us to start producing the vaccine,”