COVID-19 has taken over the lives of all aspects of our daily lives. Whilst it has been fatal for few, countries like India have a have a far lesser mortality rate compared to other countries. In any case, the world is waiting for someone to come up with a vaccine. Many countries and pharma companies are breaking their heads trying to come up with one at the earliest.
However there are generally five stages a vaccine has to go through before release for the general public. The first stage is the pre-clinical testing, later to Phase I, Phase II and Phase III respectively. Further it progresses to the approval stage and the vaccine is complete.
Researchers around the world are working on more than 150 vaccines to combat the Chinese virus. There are many contenders in various stages of development including two Indian companies. Among the many countries China, United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia, India and Russia are progressing towards the approval stage.
Now Russia is said to be completing the testing phases. Russia’s Sechenov University claims to be the first to complete human trials. The novel vaccine developed by the University of Sechenov, Russia might be one of the first of its kind to be effective against coronavirus, as researchers have claimed to have completed the work on clinical trials for the same. The news about the completion of the tests on volunteers was declared by Alexander Lukashev, the director of the Institute of Medical Parasitology, Tropical and Vector-Borne Diseases at Sechenov University.
“Sechenov University has successfully completed tests on volunteers of the world’s first vaccine against coronavirus,” adding that the volunteers will be discharged in the coming week. The group had started clinical trials in mid-June. Reports say the vaccine trial was given the go-ahead by the Russian Health Ministry on June 16, following which, the first group of volunteers received the jab of the vaccine which were held at the Gamaleya Institute, an epidemiology research centre in Moscow.
The first group had 18 volunteers, while the second one involved 23 volunteers, who were dosed with a liquid and powder form of the vaccine and isolated at the facility in a careful manner during the process. Officials based out of the Gamaleya institute also made headlines recently with a statement that the director of the institute and other researchers had tried the vaccine on themselves before the start of human studies.
The researchers also added that they were happy with the results of the trial, saying that they have been able to study the working of the vaccine on human health.”The safety of the vaccine is confirmed. It corresponds to the safety of those vaccines that are currently on the market,” Lukashev told a leading Russian media agency. 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”.