WHO establishes dialogue with Russian developers of Covid-19 vaccine

MOSCOW, Nov 19, 2020, TASS. The World Health Organization (WHO) has established dialogue with Russian developers of a COVID-19 vaccine “Sputnik V” in order to assess the vaccine, WHO Representative in Russia Melita Vujnovic said on Rossiya-24 TV channel on Wednesday, according to the TASS.

“Russian developers handed over the files to the WHO, like other developers. <…> Dialogue has been established between developers and the WHO department, which is making an assessment of the procedure (of vaccine development – TASS),” she said. The WHO official added that after the procedure is concluded, there will be a corresponding statement published on the WHO website.

Vujnovic noted that if there are enough vaccine doses, up to 2 bln people will be vaccinated by the end of 2021. “We hope this will be enough to decrease the [infection] rate,” she added.

According to the WHO, there are currently about 170 COVID-19 vaccines in development across the world. Russia registered the first COVID-19 vaccine on August 11 by the name of “Sputnik V.” The vaccine was developed by the Gamaleya Federal Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology. Post-registration trials of the vaccine are currently underway.