As the race for a potential novel coronavirus vaccine is on in order to curb the further spread of Covid-19 pandemic, Russia has been gearing up to mass produce another vaccine by November, according to a report.
Russia’s Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology plans to launch production of a Covid-19 vaccine in November, its Director-General Rinat Maksyutov told Vesti program on Rossiya-1 TV channel, as reported by Russian news agency TASS.
“We expect to start production already in November this year. So, closer to the end of the year and the start of the next year we can talk about switching to vaccination at least for [people] from risk groups with a further switch to massive vaccination,” Maksyutov said, according to the report.
Apart from this, Russia is also set to start mass vaccination campaign of a previously developed Covid-19 vaccine, which is also touted as the world’s first such vaccine, as soon as October, reported Reuters.
Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko also said Gamaleya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, a state research facility in Moscow, had completed clinical trials of the vaccine and paperwork is being prepared to register it.
Earlier, Russia said that it plans to register this coronavirus vaccine as soon as 10 August to 12 August.
Earlier, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova told a meeting on the sanitary and epidemiological situation, which was attended by President Vladimir Putin, that the state registration of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Vector was scheduled for September and the first batch was due to be produced by October.Scores of Russia’s business and political elite were given access to the experimental vaccine as early as April, according to people familiar with the effort, reported Bloomberg. Military volunteers completed Phase 2 trials of the drug last week.