Russia Becomes 1st Country To Approve COVID-19 Vaccine
As countries around the World look forward to discovering the cure for Coronavirus, COVID-19, Russian President, Vladimir Putin has announced that his country has become the first in the world to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine.
Putin, who revealed this on Tuesday said the vaccine had passed all the needed checks and had even been given to one of his daughters adding that it would soon be administered to Russian health workers.
The vaccine was developed by the state-run Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow.
It was officially registered and declared ready for use after less than two months of human testing, without completing its final Phase III trial.
However, the drug has been tested on about 100 people though Russia has yet to release any scientific data from those early trials.
Reacting to the development, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, Alex Azar said transparent data from phase three clinical trials are necessary to determine the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control in the United States of America says Phase III trials must involve a minimum of 3,000 volunteers to be recognized.
According to the latest data from the World Health Organization, WHO, dozens of COVID-19 vaccine candidates are being developed by teams of researchers around the world with several of such vaccines in final Phase III human trials.
The pandemic has killed over 737,000 people while over 20 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19.