Russia's COVID-19 vaccine may cause refusal of other vaccines if not safe: Nobel laureate

Nobel laureate Peter Charles Doherty has echoed similar concerns as his fellow scientists over the safety and efficacy of Russia's COVID-19 vaccine. The Australian researcher expressed his skepticism over the vaccine that Russia rolled out recently in an email interview to news agency PTI. Doherty said that his main worry regarding Russia's vaccine is that if it turns out to be unsafe then people may reject other vaccines as well in fear of them being unsafe too. However, Doherty during the interview added that he is confident of no major safety issues emerging from the vaccine but still is concerned about the refusal of other vaccines it can cause if it fails to deliver. 

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Russia's vaccine

On August 11, Russia announced that it had become the first country to develop a vaccine and authorise it for public use, but experts from across the world doubt the safety of the drug as it has not yet completed advanced trials on humans. Russian President Vladimir Putin had controversially claimed that one of his daughters had been given the vaccine developed in Moscow's Gamaleya institute. Scientists in Russia on several occasions had claimed that they will be the first country to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in the world, even comparing it with the space-race between the US and USSR, when the latter sent the first satellite into space. The vaccine has been named Sputnik V, after the first artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union. 

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) on August 14 had said that the vaccine developed by Russia is not among the nine vaccine candidates that it considers to be in the advanced stage, including Oxford and AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222), which is currently undergoing the final phase of testing. The United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also expressed concern about the safety of the drug developed by Russia with White House COVID-19 task force member Dr Anthony Fauci saying that he doubts the accuracy and effectiveness of the vaccine. 

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