So, if you've been watching the news, there you've probably heard that Russia has released the first widespread vaccine for the COVID-19 virus. While everyone and their mama (literally) wants this pandemic to be over and believe that a safe vaccine is probably the best and the fastest way to do it, nobody wants to be the first to take.
And even so, if you're not a fan of history, it seems as though they are trying to beat the U.S. to a vaccine like they were trying to compete to get the first man on the moon. But this time, it's not just affecting a few people, it's affecting millions.
President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had become the first country to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine, which showed "stable immunity" against the new coronavirus and had "passed all the necessary checks".
However, the vaccine, named "Sputnik V", pays homage to the world's first satellite launched by the Soviet Union (see what I mean). The vaccine has not yet completed its phase-three trial, which involves wide-scale testing with thousands of participants, but he's claiming that it as the "cure."
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According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 200 vaccine candidates are being developed and trialled across the globe, with at least 24 in the human clinical trial phase.
The results from the Russian vaccine have not been made public yet (see, sounds kind of shady already, doesn't it?).
But here's what we know so far:
The "Sputnik V" is a vaccine developed by the Gamaleya research institute in coordination with the Russian defence ministry. It is based on a proven vaccine against adenovirus - the common cold.
The vaccine is administered in two doses and consists of two serotypes of human adenovirus, each carrying an S-antigen of the new coronavirus, which enter human cells and produce an immune response.
It is a so-called viral vector vaccine, meaning it employs another virus to carry the DNA encoding of the needed immune response into cells.
The first batch of the vaccine will be made available for medical personnel in the next two weeks, he said on Wednesday.
The vaccine could be available for mass use in October, according to the country's health ministry.
“What have [the Russians] done?” Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital Philadelphia and a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, said in an interview with Yahoo News. “They’ve done a small phase I trial in 38 people.”
Wait, did he say 38 people? Yes, he said on 38 people. I have more than 38 cousins in my family.
The Russian vaccine used an adenovirus to induce neutralizing antibodies in the 38 people who were given it, Offit said. While “nobody died,” he said that relying on such a small sample of patients “doesn’t enable you to say anything about efficacy, doesn’t enable you to say anything about safety.”
Offit, who is a member of the National Institutes of Health COVID vaccine working group, said he worries about the precedent being set by the Russians in proclaiming victory on an untested vaccine. He said he was struck by the political undertones in Putin’s vaccine claims.
“It’s amazing that this was a political announcement,” Offit said. “What worries me is that our administration would interpret this as anything other than what it is, which is that Russia, if anything, is behind where we are in the United States on this vaccine. ... This is just Vladimir Putin being political. I don’t think he’s honest when he says that they’ve shown that the vaccine’s effective. They can’t possibly know that yet.”
So what do you think? Are you going to wait and see or are you going to be one of the first to take a U.S. approved vaccine? And if you are one of the first, does that mean you trust the healthcare system or is this an exception?
There are so many questions we need to answer and will answer as the months go on. We just need to be safe, stay diligent with our health, our bodies and our hygiene and believe that we will get through this together.
