World’s first Covid-19 vaccine? Russia successfully completes clinical trials

After over six months of novel coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 12 million people and killed over 500,000 all over the world, the clinical trials of the purportedly world's first coronavirus vaccine have been successfully completed.

The clinical trials of the world's first coronavirus vaccine on volunteers at Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University has been successfully completed, Vadim Tarasov, the director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Biotechnology, according to Russian news agency Sputnik, adding that the first group of volunteers would be discharged on 15 July and the second on 20 July.

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," Tarasov said.

According to Alexander Lukashev, the director of the 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.

"The safety of the vaccine is confirmed. It corresponds to the safety of those vaccines that are currently on the market," Lukashev told Sputnik.

The further vaccine development plan is already being determined by the developer's strategy, including the complexity of the epidemiological situation with the virus and the possibility of scaling up production, Lukashev added.

"Sechenov University in a pandemic situation acted not only as an educational institution but also as a scientific and technological research center that is able to participate in the creation of such important and complex products as drugs ... We worked with this vaccine, starting with preclinical studies and protocol development, and clinical trials are currently underway," Tarasov noted.

While over 7 million virus-infected people have recovered so far, scientists and other healthcare systems worldwide are trying to upgrade production and development of a potential Covid-19 vaccine as soon as possible.

Gilead Sciences, Oxford University's researchers and American biotech company Moderna are at the forefront of developing a Covid-19 vaccine. However, Gilead Sciences Inc said earlier that an analysis showed its antiviral remdesivir helped reduce the risk of death in severely ill COVID-19 patients, but cautioned that rigorous clinical trials were needed to confirm the benefit.

Moreover, BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc's Covid-19 vaccine candidate is expected to be ready to seek regulatory approval by the end of 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing the German biotech firm's chief executive officer. The experimental vaccine, which showed promise against the fast-spreading respiratory illness in early stage human testing, is expected to move into a large trial involving 30,000 healthy participants later this month, pending regulatory nod.

With inputs from ANI