Russia has submitted its Corona vaccine for initial approval

Moscow: The Russian Sovereignty Fund announced, Tuesday, that Russia has submitted a request to the World Health Organization to pre-qualify the first vaccine it has prepared against the emerging corona virus, called Sputnik.

The Russian Sovereignty Fund, involved in developing the vaccine, said in a press statement that it had submitted a request for “rapid registration and pre-qualification” for the Sputnik vaccine at the World Health Organization.

In response to a question by Agence France-Presse, the World Health Organization said it surrounded the requests for “pre-selection or registration under urgent use procedures” as “confidential”.

The Russian authorities say that Russia is “one of the first countries in the world to request the World Health Organization to prequalify a vaccine against the emerging corona virus.”

The statement added, “In the context of the epidemic, the acceleration of the registration of the vaccine according to the (World Health Organization) procedures will make the Russian vaccine available to everyone in a shorter time compared to the traditional procedures.”

For its part, the World Health Organization confirms that “if the product submitted for evaluation is deemed to comply with the criteria for inclusion on the list, the World Health Organization will publish the results widely.”

It is assumed that a “successful first choice” would allow Sputnik to be included in the list of drugs that countries use to purchase drugs in large quantities.

But at present, the World Health Organization states that it has “not yet qualified any COVID-19 vaccine or published an emergency use list.”

Russia announced in early August that it had developed and registered the “first” vaccine against Covid-19 that was prepared by the Gamalia Research Center in Moscow with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Registration by the authorities in Russia is the step before the final stage of clinical trials.

The vaccine was called “Sputnik V”, after the first satellite in history designed by the Soviet Union. But the world doubted the experimental Russian vaccine, especially because it had not reached the final stage of trials when it was announced.

However, many children of the Russian political elite said they had received the vaccination, and Vladimir Putin in particular cited one of his daughters as an example. The government hopes to distribute it massively in the country in the coming months.

And earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had registered a second vaccine against COVID-19.

Russia has seen a significant resurgence of the epidemic in recent weeks. It is the fourth in the world in terms of the number of injuries that reached 1,547,774 injuries, while the number of registered deaths reached 26589 deaths.