Has Russia really developed world’s first coronavirus COVID-19 vaccine? Here’s the truth

The director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Biotechnology Vadim Tarasov confirmed the development to Sputnik news. “Sechenov University has successfully completed tests on volunteers of the world`s first vaccine against coronavirus,” Tarasov had said.

On July 7, World Health Organisation (WHO) had said that vaccine developed by Russian institute is still in the first phase, which means that the vaccine needed toi go through at least 3-4 trials to be considered safe. This is why experts are asking that how can Sechenov University claim to have developed the vaccine so soon? 

Besides this, the WHO has listed 21 potential vaccines out of which only two have reached the advanced stage of human trials, including the vaccine of Chinese firm Sinovac and viral vector vaccine of Oxford University-AstraZeneca.

Now let’s take a closer look at Russia’s claim. The lead researcher at Sechenov University had claimed that all the human trials of the vaccine have been completed, but only 40 volunteers were included in the study. According to WHO, it is necessary to include at least 100 in the second phase and more than a thousand volunteers in the third phase of vaccine development. This shows that the Russian vaccine has just completed the first phase of the human trial.

A thorough probe revealed that the trial of Russian vaccine had started June 18, which means that Sechenov University succeeded in completing all the trials in just one month and declared the vaccine safe for human use. Recent vaccines for Malaria, Ebola and Dengue had taken at least four years to develop. It could be believed that the Russian vaccine has tremendous potential but it would not be wise to decalre it safe for human use so soon. Therefore, it would not be wrong to say that Russia’s claim about coronavirus vaccine is not completely correct.