08/16/2020 - 15:01
- Clarín.com
- World
Mass vaccination in Russia against the coronavirus will begin in a month, said the director of the Gamaleya Center for Microbiology and Epidemiology, Alexandr Ginzburg, who developed the first vaccine registered in the country against the disease, Sputnik V.
The scientist, in statements to the official Russian agency RIA Novosti, indicated that in the next seven or ten days the studies after the registration of the preparation by the Russian Ministry of Health will begin , in which tens of thousands of people will be vaccinated.
"Apparently, the Moscow Department of Health plans to include in these tens of thousands of people doctors who work in the 'red zone' (where they treat seriously ill patients with COVID-19). And this is completely correct." he added.
Guinzburg pointed out that the studies will last between four and six months , but that this will not be an obstacle to initiating the mass vaccination of the population, which, as the country's authorities have declared, will be voluntary.
Russian President Vladimir Putin surprised with the announcement of the vaccine. AP Photo
"Mass vaccination will start with some delay due to which most of the vaccines already produced will be used in the studies. Then, the rest will go to citizens. The delay can be two or three weeks , perhaps a month" he explained.
The World Health Organization (WHO) cautiously received the news that Russia had registered the world's first vaccine against COVID-19, noting that it, like the rest, must follow the prequalification and review procedures established by the agency .
The Russian vaccine was not among the six that the WHO noted last week were most advanced.
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Russia "has skipped certain trials" when developing the vaccine, and assured that his country will not do the same.
Another view of the Russian laboratory that makes the vaccine. AFP photo
The director of the US National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, even compared to "Russian roulette" the decision by the vaccine developers in Russia to skip what he described as "fundamental parts" of the approval process.
To date, Russia accumulates 922,853 cases of COVID-19 and 15,685 deaths from the disease.
Now India
India, a demographic powerhouse with an important drug industry, also joined the global competition to find a cure for the coronavirus and announced that it is developing up to three vaccines of its own, just on the same day that its Ministry of Health announced that the country surpassed the 2.5 million cases of the disease.
"Today in India, not one, not two, but three vaccines are in different phases of the testing period," said Indian Prime Minister the nationalist Narendra Modi during a speech in New Delhi for the national Independence Day.
"As soon as scientists give the go-ahead, the country is ready to produce (the vaccine) in large numbers," he added, quoted by the BBC.
The urgent need for a vaccine that allows the world to recover its social and economic life has been heightened after the disease resurfaced in the last month in Asia, Europe and Oceania, where it had been mostly controlled between April and May, and with America has become the new epicenter of the pandemic, still in the midst of the first wave of infections.
Source: EFE and AFP
