A lab technician extracts a portion of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate during testing at the Chula Vaccine Research Center, run by Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. File picture: Sakchai Lalit/AP
Moscow - The Russian Defense Ministry said Monday that the volunteers testing a vaccine against Covid-19 had proved to be immune to the virus after the tests.
"The research results showed clearly that all volunteers had a clear immune response resulting from vaccination," the ministry's Zvezda broadcasting service reported.
An immune response is a reaction that occurs within an organism for the purpose of defending against foreign invaders.
Zvezda said that the final medical examination of volunteers conducted earlier on Monday in the Main Military Clinical Hospital of the Defense Ministry was conducted by the ministry jointly with the Russian National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology.
On the 42nd day after the first vaccination, the volunteers returned to the hospital and underwent an in-depth medical examination and diagnosis, it said.
The available data showed the safety and good tolerability of the vaccine, Zvezda said.
This is one of the two vaccines against the coronavirus that had "the greatest prospects," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said Wednesday.
She said that the registration of the vaccine is planned for this month and production is due to start in September.
The other one, developed by the Russian State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology Vektor, is supposed to be registered in September with production in October, she said.
On Saturday, Russia's Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said that Russia was preparing a mass vaccination campaign against Covid-19 for October.
As of Monday, Russia registered 5 394 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking its total to 856 264.
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