This was announced at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin by the head of the Federal Biomedical Agency (FMBA) Veronika Skvortsova.

“On December 30, we received permission for clinical trials - everything had already been completed, the entire preclinic.

Immediately after the New Year, these clinical trials began.

But taking into account the fact that this is a new molecule - it is new and patented and has no analogues - we go through the first phase especially carefully, since it is necessary to prove safety already in humans.

We will finish the first phase by mid-March and move on to work with patients, move on to the second phase, ”she said on the air of“ Russia 24 ”.

Skvortsova explained that the drug is safe for humans: it does not affect their genome and immunity.

"But at the same time, it highly effectively infects the virus - in experiments on animals, the carrier of viruses decreases 10 thousand times - but, in addition, it prevents the most severe forms of the development of coronavirus infection, including preventing pneumonitis, acute respiratory distress syndromes against the background of coronavirus infection," - said the head of the department.

At the end of December 2020, FMBA received permission to conduct a clinical trial of a drug for the treatment of COVID-19.