Corona 19 vaccine data photo. AP=Yonhap News
Russia has officially approved the new coronavirus infection (Corona 19) vaccine’Kobibak’, TASS news agency reported on the 20th (local time). This is already the third vaccine developed and approved in Russia after’Sputnik V’and’Epibakcorona’.
According to reports, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mischstein announced that Kobibak was approved at a meeting on vaccines that day, and said that a single dose (120,000 doses) will be available on the market in the middle of next month. At the same time, Prime Minister Mischstein stressed that Russia is the only country to have developed three types of COVID-19 vaccines to date.
Health Minister Mikhail Murashko also told reporters that Kobebak proved its efficacy and safety in a phase 2 clinical trial. In addition, he explained that it plans to proceed with phase 3 with the commercial supply of Kobevac vaccine.
Kobibak is known as an inactivated vaccine developed by the Chumakov Immunology Research and Development Center under the Russian Academy of Sciences. Inactivated vaccines are a traditional vaccine manufacturing method that produces antibodies in the body by injecting a virus whose replication capacity has been removed. It entered the first phase last October, and it is known that the second phase is almost finished.
Earlier, Russia approved the world’s first vaccine Sputnik V developed by the Gamalea National Center for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology under its Ministry of Health in August last year. In October of the same year, it approved the’Epibakcorona’ vaccine developed by’Bector’, a national virus and biotechnology research center under the’Consumer Rights Protection and Welfare Supervision’, a health and sanitation and quarantine authority.
Sputnik V vaccine is a carrier vaccine (vector vaccine) made by inserting the Corona 19 virus gene into another virus that is harmless to the human body, and the Epibaccorona vaccine is known as a synthetic antigen method that synthesizes an antigen, a part of a protein that causes an immune response.
However, unlike general development procedures, Russia has been controversial over the efficacy and safety of the vaccine as it proceeds with phase 3 after approval.
Reporter Eunbin Kim [email protected]