World's first vaccine against coronavirus COVID-19 registered in Russia

Its distribution will begin on January 1

According to sources, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the registration of the world’s first vaccine against the coronavirus COVID-19 – “Sputnik V” (also called Gam-Covid-Vak). He did this at a meeting with members of the government.

As far as I know, a vaccine against a new coronavirus infection has been registered for the first time in the world this morning. I know that it works quite effectively, forms a stable immunity and, I repeat, has passed all the necessary tests

It is worth clarifying here that many countries are working on vaccines, and some have already started testing a few months ago. In addition, in June, China approved the use of an experimental vaccine. But only for the military. In this case, we are talking about the registration of a vaccine, that is, it is assumed that it is completely ready for use. And so far no one else has reached this stage.

Putin also noted that one of his daughters had already been vaccinated.

After the first injection, her body temperature dropped from 38 to 37 with a little. And that’s all. After the second injection, the second vaccination, the temperature also rose a little. But then everything came to naught, he feels good, and the titers are high

The vaccine was developed by the Gamaleya Center. They promise that the protective properties of the vaccine will remain for at least two years after administration. The Russian vaccine differs from foreign analogs in that it is a two-component (solution of recombinant human adenovirus Ad5 and Ad26).

Despite the fact that the drug has already passed registration, it will go into civil circulation from January 1 of next year. Literally right away, various sources, including foreign ones, violently reacted to the information about the registration of the vaccine. Many criticize the Russian Ministry of Health for the fact that the vaccine has not yet passed the third phase of clinical trials (it started on August 12), accusing the authorities of a large experiment at the population level.

But Health Minister Mikhail Murashko has already reacted to Western criticism of the vaccine.

Foreign colleagues, apparently feeling certain competitive advantages of the Russian drug, are trying to express some opinions, which, in our opinion, are absolutely unfounded.

Alexander Ginzburg, director of the Gamaleya Center, explained the reaction of Western sources approximately the same way. He also said in an interview that the vaccine actually took only 5 months to develop. But this result was not achieved out of anywhere.

The fact is that the platform, on the basis of which the vaccine was created. It was created for about 20 years. Moreover, the platform was originally intended not at all to create vaccines but to solve the problems of gene therapy. Since 2014, it has been suggested that the platform be used to create vaccines against certain viruses. And already in 2015, after only 15 months of work, a vaccine against the Ebola virus was created. That is, the platform has already managed to establish itself. It including in terms of fairly rapid creation of vaccines, long before the COVID-19 pandemic. It was also possible to speed up the process thanks to the law that allows development and research in parallel.

Ginzburg also emphasized that the short production time did not affect the evidence base for research and the safety of the final vaccine.