Home » today » World » Russia approves a third vaccine, the CoviVac | Europe | DW

Russia approves a third vaccine, the CoviVac | Europe | DW

Russia has registered its third vaccine against COVID-19, for home use, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced this Saturday (02/20/2021), although the necessary large-scale clinical trials have not yet begun.

“Starting in mid-March, the first 120,000 doses will be available. Russia is today the only country that has three vaccines,” he said.

Christened Kovivak (CoviVac), this third vaccine was manufactured by the Shumakov Research Center in Moscow and, unlike the first two vaccines, uses an inactivated virus, a more traditional technology.

Russia registered the Sputnik V vaccine in August and EpiVacCorona in October, and is vaccinating its population.

“We are accelerating vaccine production. More than 10 million doses of Sputnik V and 80,000 of EpiVacCorona have already been produced,” Mishustin explained on Saturday.

Kovivak’s record assumes that phase 3 of the trials will be passed, scheduled for March with 3,000 people, according to official sources.

Russia is the fourth country with the most infections in the world, 4.13 million. On Wednesday more than 82,000 deaths were registered, but the official data is partial since only the deaths confirmed after an autopsy count.

In a contradictory way, the Russian statistical office considered at the end of last year that there were 162,000 deaths linked to COVID-19 in the country.

afp / reuters / dpa // rr

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.