Russia Has Registered the World's First COVID-19 Vaccine

The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, announced on Tuesday that his country has managed to be the first in the world to register a vaccine against the new coronavirus.

 

"This morning a vaccine against the new coronavirus was registered for the first time in the world," said the Kremlin chief in a meeting with the Cabinet of Ministers. According to the president, the Russian vaccine is "effective", has passed all the necessary tests and allows achieving a "stable immunity" against COVID-19.

 

The Kremlin chief added that one of his daughters has already been vaccinated with the Russian preparation and now feels "fine." At the same time, he added that vaccination will be voluntary, so that "those who wish to do so do it."

 

Putin is confident that foreign countries will also soon be able to develop their COVID-19 vaccines. Russia is currently the fourth country in the world in terms of the number of new coronavirus infections with 897,599 confirmed cases, 4,945 more than yesterday, according to the latest official data.

 

The certification of the first Russian vaccine against COVID-19, the one prepared by the Gamaléi National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of Moscow (NITsEM in its acronym in Russian), was scheduled to take place tomorrow, Wednesday, according to last week. the Deputy Minister of Health, Oleg Grídnev. But President Vladimir Putin has ordered that the process be advanced one day and has just announced triumphantly that the Russian vaccine against the coronavirus, the first in the world, is now licensed.

 

"This morning the first vaccine against COVID-19 in the world was registered," Putin has launched in the course of a meeting with members of his Government. The head of the Kremlin has even assured that his daughter has already been vaccinated. He did not say which of the two, but everything indicates that it is the youngest, Ekaterina Tíjonova, who works in a scientific innovation program on artificial intelligence at Lomonosov University in Moscow.

 

However, pharmaceutical companies and research institutes in the country had urged to postpone the registration of the drug's license. The Association of Clinical Research Organizations of Russia last week sent a letter to the Ministry of Health assuring that the creators of the vaccine have not completed the tests with the participation of a sufficient number of people.