The first batch of the Russian vaccine for novel Coronavirus has been produced, according to a report in Reuters news agency. Russia had, on August 11, that a vaccine being developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute was ready and had been approved. It’s the first novel Coronavirus vaccine to be approved for public use. The Reuters report said Russia would roll out the vaccine by the end of this month. That is earlier than its previous announcements about making the vaccine available by September and starting mass inoculations by October. The Russian announcement has been received with some amount of scepticism in the global scientific community because of the fact that vaccine has been approved without the mandatory phase-III human trials. The vaccine went through phase-I and phase-II testing in superfast time, the entire process being completed in less than two months, when usually vaccines take several months, sometimes years, to complete these trials. Also read | Amidst criticism, Russia says it will test Sputnik-V on 40,000 people 📣 Express Explained is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@ieexplained) and stay updated with the latest Hunt for coronavirus vaccine: The story so far More than 160 vaccine candidates in pre-clinical or clinical trials 29 of them in clinical trials Six in final stages, phase-III of human trials At least eight candidate vaccines being developed in India. Two of these have entered phase -II trials after completing phase-I. (As on August 13; source: WHO Coronavirus vaccine landscape of August 13, 2020)
