The Russian Defense Ministry and the Gamaleya National Research Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology are finalizing clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine, the Defense Ministry said in a statement seen by Interfax on Friday.
"Consistent with the program of clinical trials, the first group of volunteers who tested the vaccine safety and tolerance will be discharged from the hospital on July 15," the statement said.
According to the ministry, the subjects are well and have no health complains and negative or undesirable reactions.
"After the controlling tests, the first group volunteers will be discharged from the military hospital on July 15 and will return to their permanent bases," the ministry said.
It also said that the second group of volunteers testing the vaccine efficiency and immunizing power will be administered with the second element of the coronavirus vaccine on July 13. "The booster form of vaccination envisaged for the second group of volunteers helps strengthen the immunity and extend its duration," the statement said.
Consistent with the research protocol, the volunteers are regularly tested for humoral and cell immunity.
The information obtained by specialists "proves that volunteers in the first and second groups have developed the immune response to the administered coronavirus vaccine," the ministry.
"On the 42nd day after the first inoculation, the volunteers will come back to the hospital for one day. They will undergo the final medical check and diagnostics, and necessary documents will be issued," the ministry said.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin on June 30 that clinical trials of the coronavirus vaccine would be completed by the end of July.
As reported earlier, the vaccine has been developed by the 48th Research Institute of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces together with the Russian Health Ministry's Gamaleya Center. The state registration of the vaccine is due to begin in August.
A number of other Russian research centers, including Rospotrebnadzor's Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology and the Federal Medical Biological Agency's St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Sera, are also working on coronavirus vaccines.
