Russian Covid-19 Vaccine Sputnik V's Clinical Trials Set To Begin In India, Four Other Countries This Month

In a major step towards India and Russia's joint effort to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the clinical trials of Russian vaccine Sputnik V will begin in India this month, reports Times of India.

Making the announcement, the chief executive of Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev said that the clinical trials of Sputnik V vaccine will also begin in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), United Arab Emirates (UAE), Philippines and Brazil.

This comes even as Russia on 26 August had already launched a mass post-registration study of the vaccine involving more than 40,000 people, just days before AstraZeneca had started the phase-3 trial of its vaccine candidate in the United States (US) with 30,000 participants.

Russia registered Sputnik V as the world's first vaccine against COVID-19 on 11 August. The candidate has been developed jointly by the RDIF and the Gamaleya National Research Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology.

It should be noted that RDIF in an earlier stated that the phase-1 and phase-2 trial results of Sputnik-V showed no serious adverse events for any of the criteria, while such incidences among other vaccine candidates ranged between one per cent to 25 per cent.

RDIF had said that the vaccine successfully generated a stable humoral and cellular immune response in cent per cent of the participants.