Russian Elite Given Experimental Covid-19 Vaccine Since April - Mass vaccinations start in Moscow on September 1, 2020

[Emily]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-20/russian-elite-got-experimental-covid-19-vaccine-from-april

Russian Elite Given Experimental Covid-19 Vaccine Since April

By Stepan Kravchenko ,Yuliya Fedorinova and Ilya Arkhipov
July 19, 2020, 7:00 PM PDTUpdated on July 20, 2020, 4:00 AM PDT

• Officials, executives given early access during testing
• Russia aims to begin mass inoculations as early as September

Scores of Russia’s business and political elite have been given early access to an experimental vaccine against Covid-19, according to people familiar with the effort, as the country races to be among the first to develop an inoculation.

Top executives at companies including aluminum giant United Co. Rusal, as well as billionaire tycoons and government officials began getting shots developed by the state-run Gamaleya Institute in Moscow as early as April, the people said. They declined to be identified as the information isn’t public...

[sharon sanders]

New vaccine announced:

Russia Registers World’s First Covid-19 Vaccine Despite Safety Concerns

Officials in Russia and the West express alarm at the speed the vaccine was developed

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-...ne-11597141899

[Mary Wilson]

Russia created a website about its coronavirus vaccine.

The first registered vaccine against COVID-19

https://sputnikvaccine.com

[Emily]

Well-done website. They will be the first to use 2 different adenovirus carriers for the 2 shots.

[Emily]

https://www.space.com/russia-names-coronavirus-vaccine-sputnik-v.html

Russia names its 1st COVID-19 vaccine 'Sputnik V' after space race triumph
By Chelsea Gohd a day ago

Russia's working on a COVID-19 vaccine, and it's got a seriously space-y name: Sputnik V.

The country announced Tuesday (Aug. 11) that its first vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has received regulatory approval for foreign markets, according to Reuters. And, in a nod to last century's Cold War space race, they named the vaccine Sputnik V after the world's first satellite, called Sputnik, launched by the Soviet Union on Oct. 4, 1957. The name signifies the country's success in being the first to have a vaccine approved, according to a Russian government official, Reuters reported.
...
.Russia is not the only world power to draw on outer space for inspiration in naming COVID-19 treatments. In the United States, the Trump administration launched an initiative named "Operation Warp Speed." In science fiction like "Star Trek," people travel in spacecraft at "warp speed," or an extremely high speed not possible with existing technology...

[Mary Wilson]

Fauci, Azar cast doubt on Putin's coronavirus vaccine claim

AUGUST 12, 2020 / 12:53 PM / CBS/AP

Two leading voices on health issues in the U.S. are expressing skepticism about Russian President Valdimir Putin's claim that his country was the first to develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine. Putin's claim on Tuesday sparked immediate doubts about the science and safety behind the purported achievement.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday he hopes Moscow has "actually definitively proven that the vaccine is safe and effective. I seriously doubt that they've done that."

Fauci added that the U.S. is working on "half a dozen or more vaccines. So if we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people or giving them something that doesn't work, we could start doing this, you know, next week if we wanted to. But that's not the way it works."

Separately, U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said during a visit to Taiwan Wednesday that the push to develop a COVID-19 vaccine is "not a race to be first."

Azar said the U.S. is combining the powers of its government, economy and biopharmaceutical industry to "deliver as quickly as we can for the benefit of the United States' citizens, but also for the people of the world, safe and effective vaccines."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-vaccine-anthony-fauci-alex-azar-cast-doubt-putin-russia-claim/

[Mary Wilson]

Dr. Fauci says Russia risks ‘hurting a lot of people’ by rushing coronavirus vaccine

Published: Aug. 12, 2020 at 7:06 p.m. ET

By Quentin Fottrell

‘Having a vaccine, and proving that a vaccine is safe and effective, are two different things,’ he told ABC News

“We have half a dozen or more vaccines, so if we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people or giving them something that doesn’t work we could start doing this, you know, next week if we wanted to, but that’s not the way it works,” Fauci told ABC News in an interview late Tuesday.

“I hope that the Russians have actually, definitively proven that the vaccine is safe and effective,” Fauci said. “I seriously doubt that they’ve done that.” He added, “We have a way of doing things in this country where we care about safety and we care about efficacy.”

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dr-fauci-says-russia-risks-hurting-a-lot-of-people-by-rushing-coronavirus-vaccine-2020-08-12

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/...hy-they-matter

By —Abram L. Wagner, The Conversation
Russia is cutting corners on COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials. Here’s why they matter
Health Aug 14, 2020 1:14 PM EDT

Russia’s announcement that a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine is registered there, with plans for quick distribution in the general population this fall, is being condemned by scientists worldwide.

Findings from scientific studies of this vaccine, named “Sputnik V,” are not available. Large safety and efficacy trials are only now getting underway. But despite only two months of preliminary testing in people, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the vaccine “quite effective” and it’s received regulatory approval.

In other places, notably the United States, China and the European Union, even as researchers rush to develop vaccines, they continue to publish studies of these vaccines at a more measured pace than is happening in Russia.

As an epidemiologist who studies vaccine hesitancy and vaccine-preventable disease, I’m concerned about this news from Russia. After essential workers and high-risk groups are vaccinated, I would want to be among the first in line for an approved COVID-19 vaccine, but the medical research system must make sure any vaccine is safe and effective before distributing it to the population at large.
Clinical trials have a valuable role

Before any drug, vaccine or medical device is licensed for use in the general population, it needs to go through several rounds of large-scale testing. These studies are designed to make sure the intervention is safe and effective, and to understand what the appropriate dosage will be...

[Emily]

https://sputnikvaccine.com/newsroom/forbidden-op-ed-the-sputnik-vaccine-as-a-lifesaving-global-partnership-eng/

FORBIDDEN OP-ED: THE SPUTNIK VACCINE AS A LIFESAVING GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP


This opinion piece, which tells the story behind the creation of the Russian vaccine against COVID-19 and emphasizes the willingness of Russia to cooperate with the international community, has been rejected by all leading Western media. We therefore decided to publish it as is in order to share our views with an international audience and to lift the blockade imposed on positive information about the Russian COVID-19 vaccine. We give right to all media outlets to re-publish this op-ed if they find it useful to present their readers with the history and some facts about the first registered coronavirus vaccine in the world. We believe that this information is crucial for the international effort to fight the world’s biggest challenge and would like readers to decide for themselves why this op-ed has been rejected. We also launched the website sputnikvaccine.com to provide accurate and up-to-date information about the vaccine.

...

A COVID-19 vaccine is the world’s number one priority and many countries, organizations and companies claim they are close to developing one. By the end of this year some other countries may have their own vaccines. It is important that political barriers do not prevent the best available technologies from being used for the benefit of all people in the face of the most serious challenge humankind has faced in decades.

Unfortunately, instead of looking into the science behind the proven adenoviral vector-based vaccine platform Russia has developed, some international politicians and media chose to focus on politics and attempts to undermine the credibility of the Russian vaccine. We believe that such an approach is counter-productive and call for a political “ceasefire” on vaccines in the face of COVID-19 pandemic.

It is not broadly known worldwide that Russia has been one of the global leaders in vaccine research for centuries. Russian Empress Catherine the Great set an example in 1768 when she received the country’s first smallpox vaccination, 30 years before the first vaccination was done in the United States.

In 1892 Russian scientist Dmitri Ivanovsky observed an unusual effect while studying tobacco leaves infected with a mosaic disease. The leaves remained infectious even after the scientist filtered out the bacteria. Although it was still almost half a century before the first virus could be seen through a microscope, Ivanovsky’s research gave birth to a new science called virology.

Since Ivanovsky’s discovery, Russia has been one of the global leaders in virology and vaccine research, producing scores of talented scientists such as researcher Nikolay Gamaleya, who studied at the laboratory of French biologist Louis Pasteur in Paris and opened the world’s second vaccination station for rabies in Russia in 1886.

The Soviet Union continued to support research into viruses and vaccines. Everyone born after the Second World War received mandatory vaccinations against polio, tuberculosis and diphtheria. In a rare example of Cold War era cooperation, three leading Soviet virologists went to the United States in 1955 to offer testing opportunities in the Soviet Union for a U.S. vaccine against polio, a deadly disease which claimed millions of lives. If we were able to cooperate then, we can and must do it again now.

Decades of efforts by Russian and Soviet scientists led to the creation of an excellent research infrastructure, such as the National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology named after Nikolai Gamaleya. This infrastructure ranges from one of the richest “virus libraries” in the world, created using a unique preservation technique, to experimental animal breeding centers. We are proud of this legacy, which allowed us to create the first approved COVID-19 vaccine in the world. We already received international requests for 1 bln doses of our vaccine and reached international agreements to produce 500 mln doses annually with the intention to ramp it up.

THE REAL SECRET

Today, many Western media and politicians question the speed of the COVID-19 vaccine creation in Russia, raising doubts about its efficacy and authenticity. The secret behind this speed is Russia’s expertise in vaccine research. Since the 1980s, the Gamaleya Center has led the effort to develop a technological platform using adenoviruses, found in human adenoids and normally transmitting the common cold, as “vectors” or vehicles, which can induce a genetic material from another virus into a cell. The gene from adenovirus, which causes the infection, is removed while a gene with the code of a protein from another virus is inserted. This inserted element is small, not a dangerous part of a virus and is safe for the body but still helps the immune system to react and produce antibodies, which protect us from the infection.

The technological platform of adenovirus-based vectors makes it easier and faster to create new vaccines through modifying the initial carrier vector with genetic material from new emerging viruses. Such vaccines provoke a strong response from a human body in order to build immunity while the overall process of vector modification and pilot-scale manufacturing takes only a few months.

Human adenoviruses are considered some of the easiest to engineer in this way and therefore they have become very popular as vectors. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic all Russian researchers had to do was to extract a coding gene from the spike of the novel coronavirus and implant it into a familiar adenovirus vector for delivery into a human cell. They decided to use this already proven and available technology instead of going into uncharted territory.

The most recent studies also indicate that two shots of the vaccine are needed to create a long-lasting immunity. Since 2015 Russian researchers have been working on a two-vector approach hence the idea to use two types of adenoviral vectors, Ad5 and Ad26, in the COVID-19 vaccine. In this way, they trick the body, which has developed immunity against the first type of vector, and boost the effect of the vaccine with the second shot using a different vector. It is like two trains trying to deliver an important cargo to a fortress of a human body which needs the delivery in order to start producing antibodies. You need the second train to make sure the cargo reaches its destination. The second train should be different from the first one, which already came under attack from the body’s immune system and is already familiar to it. So, while other vaccine makers have only one train, we have two...

[sharon sanders]

In Moscow, vaccination against influenza and SARS will begin on September 1

08:32 08.16.2020 (updated: 11:10 08.16.2020)


MOSCOW, August 16 - RIA Novosti. Vaccinations against seasonal diseases, influenza and ARVI will begin in Moscow on September 1, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in an interview with the Russia 1 TV channel

https://ria.ru/20200816/1575845002.html

[Emily]

https://www.timesnownews.com/health/article/1-in-2-russian-doctors-say-they-wont-get-vaccinated-as-moscow-gets-ready-to-roll-out-covid-19-vaccine-poll/638043

1 in 2 Russian doctors say they won't get vaccinated as Moscow gets ready to roll out COVID-19 vaccine: Poll

Salome Phelamei

Updated Aug 17, 2020 | 08:52 IST