Clinical Trials of COVID-19 Vaccines by Russia's Biocad, Generium to Start in June

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Clinical trials of the first COVID-19 vaccines developed by the Russian pharmaceutical companies Biocad and Generium should start in June, Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said on Monday.

"In June, clinical trials of the first vaccines developed by our pharmaceutical companies Biocad and Generium, together with leading scientific organisations of the Health Ministry and Rospotrebnadzor [the public health watchdog], should start", Manturov said at a meeting of the COVID-19 response coordinating council.

In the meantime, multiple countries are conducting research to create a vaccine against the disease, which has already infected over 6,000,000 people globally and claimed over 372,000 lives.

A medical specialist holds a testing tube with blood in Hadassah clinic, which offers tests for for antibodies against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at the Skolkovo innovation centre on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia April 24, 2020

© REUTERS / Maxim Shemetov

According to Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamalei Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, it is likely that a vaccine against the coronavirus will be produced by the end of summer.

At the same, the US government’s top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci noted that a vaccine may be deployable by the end of the year, while China and the United Kingdom have also announced that they are working on vaccines to stop the virus.