Russia's COVID-19 Vaccine Development Plans Are Extensive

In addition to the two coronavirus vaccines that have already been registered by the Russian Federation, another twenty-four COVID-19 vaccine candidates were reported by Interfax to be in various stages of development.

Inna Kulikova, the director of the Russian Health Ministry's Department of Emergency Medical Care and Health Risk Management, stated at the Medicine and Quality 2020 conference held on December 8, 2020, "The Health Ministry of the Russian Federation registered the Gam-Covid-Vac (Sputnik V) vaccine on August 11, 2020, and the EpiVacCorona vaccine two months later.” 

“At the moment, Russian national research centers and pharmaceutical companies are developing another 24 potential vaccines,' Kulikova added.

The Head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) Anna Popova said earlier that Rospotrebnadzor's Vector State Research Center is working on another 3 candidate vaccines, among them a combined flu-coronavirus vaccine, a measles virus-based vaccine, and a recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus-based vaccine.

The Vector press service said earlier that it has no immediate plans to conduct clinical trials of these vaccines on humans because the center's priority is to ‘put the registered vaccine EpiVacCorona  into public circulation.’

Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, previously stated they have already received applications for 1.2 billion doses of the Sputnik V vaccine from approximately 50 countries.

In the USA, the leading experimental COVID-19 vaccines pending U.S. FDA approval were created by the German firm BioNTech, (BNT162b2) which has partnered with Pfizer Inc. for distribution, and Massachusetts-based Moderna, Inc., which produced the mRNA-1273 vaccine candidate.

Additionally, New Jersey-based Johnson and Johnson's Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V. investigational SARS-CoV-2 viral vector vaccine is an adenovirus serotype 26 (Ad26) vector-based vaccine in phase 3 study.

As is Maryland-based Novavax's NVX-CoV-2373, a prefusion protein subunit coronavirus vaccine candidate.

The leading vaccine candidate from England was produced by the University of Oxford, (AZD1222), which has partnered with AstraZeneca for distribution in the USA.

A listing of COVID-19 vaccines and candidates is published by PrecisionVaccinations.  

Note: The FDA has meetings scheduled for December 10 and 17 and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recently scheduled vaccine committee reviewed meetings for December 11th and 13th.

PrecisionVaccinations publishes research-based vaccine development news.