Russia has now “won” the race to approve a coronavirus vaccine — by moving the finish line.
The country’s health ministry reported that it has granted approval to a candidate being developed by a company called Sistema, even though it still hasn’t entered a large scale phase 3 trial.
Despite the fact that it has only gone through earlier phase 1/2 trials, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, expressed confidence that the vaccine candidate is effective and will form “strong immunity.”
Health care workers in Russia are going to be offered an opportunity to take the vaccine in the coming weeks.
The vaccine, which will be marketed as “Sputnik V” overseas, will be offered to health care workers in Russia first after it is produced. Agreements have been put in place for 500 million doses of the vaccine to be manufactured in Brazil each year. There are already requests from other countries for 1 billion doses of the vaccine.
Read the full Reuters report.
