With every passing day as we wake up once again in the morning to work from home, we often think when will the COVID-19 pandemic finally end? We hear news every day that vaccine makers are in their final phases for testing the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.?
However, recently, Russia announced that it has launched the first vaccine to combat COVID-19 -- while it is still undergoing its phase III trials.
This surely raises several concerns regarding the safety of the vaccine, seeing that Russia desperately wanted to be first in the race for bringing the first COVID-19 vaccine to the people.
And now, a YouTuber documents the effects of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine in a video.
The video starts with the guy speaking in a polish accent describing his experience getting the vaccine. However, a few days later, the guy¡¯s accent slightly changes, sounding a bit Russian and a week later, the accent has gone full-on Russian with the YouTuber speaking Russian phrases too. In case you didn¡¯t quite see it, this was in fact a sort of parody video mocking the vaccine.?
While thoroughly entertaining, the video¡¯s mocking nature is a stark reminder that the vaccine is clearly not ready or to be trusted.?
Surely Putin did try to earn people¡¯s trust by saying that his daughters were vaccinated and are safe, to comfort the masses concerned about the efficacy of the vaccine, but it is not all clear yet.?
Phase I trials of a vaccine usually involve testing of the vaccine on animals whereas phase II involves testing it among a small group of human subjects (which allegedly it passed with flying colours), however, it is phase III that actually tests the efficacy of the vaccine to larger groups. The initial human trials were conducted only with a handful of human test subjects and as I mentioned earlier, the completion of phase III of the vaccine is still pending.?
Currently, the vaccine is being administered on 2000 Russians as well as a? group of people in Mexico, UAE and Saudi Arabia as a part of its phase III trials.?
This number is still quite low, considering Moderna is conducting phase III with over 30,000 volunteers whereas Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has 5,000 volunteers for its phase III trials, however, they also had over 10,000 volunteers for phase II.?
The tech that is at play here is also concerning. Russian officials state that they¡¯re using human adenovirus vectors that have been made weaker so they don¡¯t replicate in the body. This method is similar to the ones used by Oxford University and AstraZeneca. However, other vaccine makers are using two of these vectors, whereas the Russian vaccine is using two, but administers it one after another.?
The research data pertaining to the efficacy of the vaccine can be found here and here. After the completion of phase III trials, the vaccine will go under mass-production in September.?