• Covid-19 Putin Announces Russia Has Developed "First Vaccine" Against Coronavirus
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Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday the authorization in the country of a coronavirus vaccine that, he says, is safe and effective. In his words, Russia thus becomes the first country to register an immunization against Covid-19 that could be available to Russian citizens from January. A daughter of the president, he assured, has already tried the product, with hardly any side effects.

However, several experts in the development of vaccines doubt the veracity of the announcement. The development of the vaccine, carried out at the Gamaleya Institute, has been not very transparent and has not fulfilled the usual requirements in science , such as the publication of the results of the research that must be carried out, they point out.

"There is no published preclinical or clinical data," denounces Mariano Esteban, Head of the Poxvirus and Vaccines Group of the CSIC's National Center for Biotechnology and leader of one of the groups working in Spain on the development of a vaccine against Covid- 19.

In order to register a vaccine, "you have to go through a series of phases", which include preclinical and also clinical trials (phase 1, 2 and 3), where the safety and then the efficacy of the product must first be tested, he clarifies Stephen.

"But in this case, the international scientific community has not been able to review any of these data , as is usual. We do not know what this vaccine is like, what immunogeneity it produces, what its safety is ... The practices must be followed. If they have succeeded This progress has to be demonstrated by meeting the requirements set by the scientific community. This secrecy only raises doubts ", he emphasizes.

Of the same opinion is Isabel Sola, director of the Coronavirus Laboratory of the National Center for Biotechnology of the CSIC, and also the leader of another of the groups that, from Spain, are looking for a vaccine against Covid-19.

"It would be an act of faith to believe information that has come out at a press conference, but has not been published in any scientific channel," he says.

The vaccine has been reported to be based on a viral vector, adenovirus type 26, that expresses the pathogen's protein S, but there are no developmental details , he adds. "In science it is necessary to detail how the experiments have been done. We cannot know if it is effective or safe , there is no reliable information," says Sola.

On the other hand, Sola also doubts that, in the elapsed time, all the necessary phases for the development of the vaccine have been carried out.

Already last week, the main epidemiologist of the United States, Anthony Fauci, indicated, before the announcement of the next approval of the product, that he hoped that the Russian authorities were "really testing" the vaccines "before administering them to someone".

According to information coming from Russia, the drug would not have completed phase 3 of the trials, which is key to knowing the effectiveness of immunization.

"The announcement seems more like a propaganda measure than anything else," Sola and Esteban agree.

Both the Moderna and Oxford vaccines, the two most advanced on the international scene, have just started phase 3 trials and no clear results are expected before October.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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