As the world races towards finding an effective and safe vaccine against the novel coronavirus, the clinical trials of the world’s first coronavirus vaccine on volunteers at Russia’s Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University have been completed, reports a Russian agency. The vaccine is named “Gam-COVID-Vac Lyo”. It is believed that if the claim of Sechenov University is true, it will be the world’s first corona vaccine.
Vadim Tarasov, the director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Biotechnology said that the university began clinical trials of the vaccine produced by Russia’s Gamalei Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology on June 18. “Sechenov University has successfully completed tests on volunteers of the world’s first vaccine against coronavirus”, he was quoted.
?#Sechenov University has successfully completed tests on volunteers of the world's first vaccine against #COVID19.
"The #vaccine is safe. The volunteers will be discharged on July 15 and July 20", chief researcher Elena Smolyarchuk told TASS ➡️ https://t.co/jVrmWbLvwX pic.twitter.com/V8bon4lieR
— Russia in India (@RusEmbIndia) July 12, 2020
According to Alexander Lukashev, director of Institute of Medical Parasitology, Tropical and Vector-Borne Diseases at Sechenov University, the objective of this stage of the study was to show the vaccine’s safety for human health, which was successfully done. Now when this vaccine will reach people, it is not yet known, but Alexander Lukashev said that it will soon be available in the market.
As of now, the US has accounted for world’s highest number of infections at (3,413,995) followed by Brazil (1,866,176), then India (878,254) and Russia at number four with (727,162). Though many countries have reached the human trial stage, Russia is the only country till date which has announced completing human clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine.