CORONA VACCINE TRACKER

Third stage of Sputnik V to begin soon

The third stage of the research on the world's first registered vaccine against the novel coronavirus, called Sputnik V, may begin in 7-10 days, a report has said. According to the Tass news agency, several tens of thousands of people are expected to take part in this research of the vaccine created by the Gamaleya Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Health Ministry. "On Monday, we will present the first version of the protocol on post-registration research," Alexander Gintsburg, Director of the Gamaleya National Research Center, was quoted as saying to Tass. Gintsburg said several tens of thousands of people were expected to be involved by the third stage. The research will be conducted in the Moscow Region.

UK secures another 90 mn doses

The United Kingdom has moved further into its coronavirus vaccine deals with two more companies to ensure the supply of an additional 90 million does if the vaccines are successful. It had earlier signed deals with four other developers for a combined supply of 250 million doses. The latest deal includes 30 million doses of a potential vaccine being developed by Janassen, the pharmaceutical arm of Johnson & Johnson, and 60 million doses of that being developed by the US biotech firm Novavax. The country’s previous agreements were with AstraZenca and Oxford University (100 million doses), Pfizer and BioNtech (30 million), GlaxoSmitKline and Sanofi (60 million), and French company Valneva (60 million).

‘Half an effective vaccine enough’

If a successfully tested vaccine is half effective, it would be good enough to bring the world back to normalcy within a year, according to Anthony Fauci, a top US infectious disease expert. Fauci hopes a COVID-19 vaccine would be available by the end of this year, beginning of 2021, “in a safe way”. In an interview with American news broadcaster PBS, he said it shouldn’t take later than the start of the next year to get the vaccine. While US President Donald Trump claims a vaccine may be ready by US elections in November, Fauci says it may take until well into 2021 for doses to reach the masses.