She recalled that the Chumakov Center has more than 70 years of experience in the production of whole-virion vaccines.

“That is, even before the start of the creation of a new vaccine, an important and significant part of the technology was developed.

We managed to get our big shots, and we already had a platform, without which we would hardly have coped with the task so quickly, "the Stopkoronavirus.rf portal quotes her.

Work on the creation of a vaccine against coronavirus began at the end of March 2020, added Pinyaeva.

The Chumakov Center signed an agreement on scientific cooperation with the Kommunarka hospital, which was one of the first in Russia to accept patients with coronavirus in order to gain access to the biomaterial of SARS-CoV-2 infected.

Then work began on obtaining virus isolates and full genome sequencing was carried out, resulting in a vaccine strain and another strain that is used for quality control.

“It took us one month to get the vaccine strain.

The development of the vaccine production technology took another two months.

After that, we started preclinical and clinical trials, ”said the head of the technology development department at the Chumakov Center.

On February 20, the KoviVac vaccine was registered in Russia.

The director of the Chumakov center, Aydar Ishmukhametov, spoke in an interview with RT about the features of the new Russian vaccine against COVID-19.

The virologist, Doctor of Medical Sciences Anatoly Altstein, in an interview with the TV channel "360" compared the vaccines against the coronavirus "KoviVac" and "Sputnik V".