Reactions to Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement that Russia was the first in the world to register a vaccine against the coronavirus are not slowing down.
And while the Western world shows a great deal of skepticism and even openly criticizes the Russians, and among the criticisms it is mostly stated that due to the Russian non-transparency of the vaccine called Sputnik-V, it cannot be believed that it is effective and safe, the Russians are convinced of the effectiveness of their vaccine and announce the next phase towards making the vaccine publicly available.
Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is funding research into a Russian-approved coronavirus vaccine, said on Tuesday that the introduction of the drug "will be very gradual".
"We're not going to give it to 10 million people tomorrow," Dmitriev told CNN.
"It will be a very gradual, careful move forward"; he said.
The vaccine was developed by the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow, and the name Sputnik-V is a reference to the Soviet Union's surprise launch of the world's first satellite in 1957. It has yet to go through key phase three trials, in which it would be applied to thousands of people, Index reports.
"We can say that it works, I received the vaccine and I gave it to my parents, my wife..."
"We can say it's working," Dmitriev said on CNN Live.
The announcement of the Russian coronavirus vaccine, on the other hand, caused a lot of skepticism. The World Health Organization said in a statement on the Russian vaccine that "vaccine research should be accelerated by following established processes through each development step to ensure that any vaccines that eventually enter production are safe and effective."
In the CNN program, Dmitriev was asked on what basis his claim that the vaccine is proven to be effective is based.
"It was proven through the first phase, the second phase," said Dmitriyev. "We will have three phases of trials in many other countries, in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and the Philippines.
"According to Russian law, when you have a pandemic, when you have an epidemic like this, you can do the third phase at the same time as testing the vaccine on risk groups, which is what we are doing. We believe that this is the right approach and that approach makes sense. And the rest of the world that understands something from the science behind our vaccine is responding positively. We have received requests for a billion doses of vaccines. I think time will tell the success of the Russian approach," concluded Dmitriyev.
Russia, however, still does not provide scientific data on its testing of the Sputnik-V vaccine.
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