On August 11, Russia announced that it had approved the Covid-19 vaccine after less than two months of human testing.
Ambitious to become a leader in the global race to develop measures to prevent pandemics, but Russia has not conducted large-scale trials nor provided evidence of the product’s effectiveness.
`Basically, Russia is conducting a large-scale trial on the entire population,` said Ayfer Ali, a drug research expert at Britain’s Warwick Business School.
She said the approval process moving so quickly could have caused scientists to miss some potential side effects.
Previously, President Vladimir Putin announced that the vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow, is guaranteed to be safe.
However, Francois Balloux, an expert at the Institute of Genetics, University College London, UK, said that this is `a reckless decision`.
`Mass vaccination with a vaccine that has not been fully tested is unethical. Any problems with this campaign will be catastrophic. It will not only negatively impact public health
Professor Danny Altmann, Department of Immunology at Imperial College London, also agrees with this view.
The Covid-19 vaccine model was developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Moscow, on August 6.
Although Russia claims to be the country leading the race, more than 10 other manufacturers around the world are still in the process of conducting large-scale clinical trials with tens of thousands of volunteers participating.
China is also one of the pioneers in the vaccine race, typical `candidates` come from two pharmaceutical companies CanSino and SinoVac.
The actions of the above companies are different from the Russian side.
Peter Kremsner, an expert at German University Hospital, Tuebingen city, explained: `Normally, vaccines need to be tested with many people before being approved. I think Russia’s move is reckless, if not already.
To date, Russian scientists have not published any important data, including production methods, safety, immune response and ability to prevent nCoV.
