Russia has officially a coronavirus vaccine that will go into production in September. The vaccine was announced in a televised address by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin about its approval, dubbing it as Sputnik V.
The coronavirus vaccine will first be used on health workers and vulnerable populations across the world. This will be followed by a national rollout of the vaccine in January 2021. The vaccine development testing, launching and approval have only taken a few months, casting doubts about its effectiveness among scientists.
Development of the coronavirus vaccine
The coronavirus vaccine was developed at the Gamaleya Research Institute in Moscow and has only been tested on just 76 people. Records of the vaccine also do not show any data on other clinical trials or animal studies. Its potential to work on preventing infection of the virus on subjects whom the virus was administered or its potential efficacy and safety have not been published.
Normally, for a vaccine to have come this far, to a point that a full-scale production is being approved, it requires to go different phases with phase 3 being the most vigorous. In this phase, the vaccine is expected to be tried on tens of thousands of volunteers. This is done in order to establish its effectiveness when administered to a large sample and also to measure the safety of the vaccine.
Such a large number of volunteers are also needed to take part in the development of a vaccine in order to ensure that all side effects on the virus can be noted. Skipping this phase and rolling the vaccine to millions of people, without prior knowledge and warning of side effects that the virus might cause, can cause panic among the people taking the virus.
This has also been a significant concern among scientists who believe that any rolling out of the vaccine can have a negative impact on the populace, especially if it ends up having severe side effects. The fear that the coronavirus vaccine may also lead to more anti-vax sentiments, hence crippling the global’s ability to fight the virus.
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