Chief Physician of the Military Clinical Hospital of the Russian Ministry of Defense N.N. Burdenko said in a statement that tests for the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines have been successfully completed. According to Svetlana Volchikhina, head of the therapeutic department of the hospital, based on the test results, we can say with certainty about the formation of immune responses.
The head of the Ministry of Health, Mikhail Murashko, said that starting from October, the country's population will be vaccinated against COVID-19. The vaccine will be given to health workers and teachers who are at high risk for the first coronavirus exposure. It has not yet been officially announced who will be vaccinated. However, it is clear that vaccination of the population is planned.
But will these vaccines be a way to get rid of the infection? Or will the fight against the virus continue?
According to Gadin.Net, citing publika.az, Russian experts have made a detailed statement about the effectiveness of vaccines. We present the opinions of experts:
According to Vitaly Zverev, an academician at the Russian Academy of Sciences and director of the Mechnikov Research Vaccines Institute, the effectiveness of the vaccines has not yet been fully proven.
"It is possible to create a good vaccine from the beginning of the coronavirus, but it is impossible to test how good, effective and safe it is. It takes time. To say that it is effective and safe is, in my opinion, completely wrong. Vaccination begins about four to five years after preparation for widespread use. How can this process be accelerated, but it is too early to talk about efficiency and safety.
Full-fledged research is very important, it can neither be reduced nor increased. Russian vaccines have so far been administered to only a few volunteers and have been shown to be effective. About 500 people took part in the first phase of the trial in China, and a third phase of the study is planned for 30,000 Americans in the United States. We want doctors and teachers to vaccinate after short tests, but we do not understand what it is.
There are two main possible risks. First, a year or six months after the vaccination, we may see side effects that are not known to us until later. Second, to date, no convincing evidence has been published on the effectiveness of the vaccine. It is not entirely clear how long the immunity, especially after vaccination, will last. No one knows exactly how it will behave in the human body in the future. Because it is a vector vaccine based on an adenovirus, it includes a part of the coronavirus genome. These are not clinical experiences, but new technologies. Such technology is not widespread anywhere. Only one such drug is known to be approved for the treatment of cervical cancer in Japan. "Before using such technologies for mass vaccination, it should be studied very carefully," Zverev said in a statement.
Immunologist Nikolai Kryuchkov, PhD, believes that it is impossible to prepare a really reliable and effective vaccine against coronavirus before next spring:
"In the first trials, the safety of the vaccine was determined in healthy volunteers. The next step is to test for immunogenicity, ie the effectiveness of the vaccine. In general, either two separate studies or a multi-stage study should be conducted. It usually takes at least 5-6 months after the vaccine is ready. Taking into account the vaccination registration procedures and all the simplifications, it can take at least two months.
Konstantin Chumakov, deputy director of the US Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines Department, warned that another "trap" could be antibiotic-boosting infection. According to him, during the development of anti-coronavirus vaccines, it was found that some antibodies produced in the body do not protect against coccidia, and can even aggravate the disease, a phenomenon called ASUI. However, the expert stressed that there are technological ways to prevent such a dangerous effect. Therefore, a complete clinical trial is very important.
N.F. Denis Logunov, Deputy Director for Scientific Affairs of the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, stressed the importance of vaccines:
"Based on the events that took place at the institute over the past three years. These are experiments to develop a vaccine against the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Virus (MERS). The new strain of coronavirus is the closest relative of MERS. From this point of view, there are no obstacles for us to take ready-made work for COVID-19 vaccination as a basis.
Vector vaccine was chosen because it is the most effective and safe. The vector is derived from an adenovirus that has long been known to mankind. At the same time, two parts of the genome were removed from the vector to make the vaccine more reliable. With such changes, the virus cannot multiply in the body's cells
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