A new peer-reviewed study in The Lancet has found that Russia’s potential coronavirus vaccine has no major side effects yet.
- According to The Lancet, doctors in the trials have done two phase one and phase two studies at two hospitals in Russia.
- The trials included 76 healthy volunteers from 18 to 60 years old.
- The vaccine formulations were “safe and well tolerated,” the article said.
- The trials — which lasted 42 days and had 38 adults each — “did not find any serious adverse effects among participants, and confirmed that the vaccine candidates elicit an antibody response,” the study’s authors wrote.
- “Large, long-term trials including a placebo comparison, and further monitoring are needed to establish the long-term safety and effectiveness of the vaccine for preventing COVID-19 infection.”
What to consider about Russia’s vaccine
Back in August, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country had the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, as I wrote for Deseret.com. He said he even tested the vaccine on his daughter.
- “As far as I know, a vaccine against a new coronavirus infection has been registered this morning, for the first time in the world,” he said at a meeting with members of the government, RIA Novosti reported.
But Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner, told CNBC he wouldn’t use the COVID-19 vaccine from Russia unless there was a clinical trial that proved it was successful.
- “They’ve cleared the equivalent, really, of a phase 1 clinical trial in terms of putting it in 100 to maybe as many as 300 patients so it needs to be evaluated in a large-scale clinical trial.”