Russian Defence Minister Gets 'Sputnik V' Shot for Coronavirus on Day Initial Study Shows It is Safe

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Friday received a shot of the country’s ‘Sputnik V’ vaccine on a day a study said the Covid-19 vaccine has been shown to elicit antibody response with no serious adverse events in small human trials.

According to preliminary findings published in The Lancet journal, results from early-phase non-randomised vaccine trials in a total of 76 people show that two formulations of the vaccine have a good safety profile detected over 42 days, and induce antibody responses in all participants within 21 days.

The official Twitter account of the Russian Embassy in India uploaded a video of Shoigu smiling and receiving the shot of the vaccine.

The first registered Russian vaccine was presented to the Defence Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the countries of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Serbia on Friday, said the Russian Ministry of Defence.

The World Health Organization on Friday insisted it would never endorse a vaccine that has not proven safe and effective, amid concerns over the rush to develop a jab for Covid-19.

“WHO will not endorse a vaccine that is not effective and safe,” the organisation’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.

Tedros welcomed several candidate vaccines for Covid-19 having moved to advanced stages of testing, and voiced hope that one would soon become available “so that the world can get back to normal.”