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Experience with Ebola can help Russia develop vaccine against COVID-19 faster

Russia has managed to begin clinical testing of the vaccine against the novel coronavirus faster due to its experience in developing an Ebola vaccine, the Russian Defense Ministry informed reporters on Saturday, citing Alexander Ginzburg, director of the Gamalei National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology.

“By using this platform [technological platform for the development of the Ebola vaccine], the Gamalei National Research Center has managed to finalize the whole spectrum of research work and pre-clinical testing in tandem with the Russian Defense Ministry, namely the 48th Central Research Institute, in a short period of time. We have achieved this due to the fact that several vaccines had been developed earlier, namely against the Ebola virus,” Ginzburg said.

He thanked the Russian Defense Ministry for “very fruitful and quality work”, adding that “the high level of cooperation will help reach the desired result in a restricted time frame.”

Clinical testing of the vaccine developed by the Gamalei National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology began on June 18. Eighteen volunteers have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus. Clinical testing is expected to conclude in late July.

Russia has documented 7,889 cases of COVID-19, a disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in the past 24 hours, the anti-coronavirus crisis center informed reporters on Saturday. For four days running, the daily increase in new cases does not surpass 8,000.

According to the crisis center, Russia has documented a total of 576,952 cases of the virus. The daily increase rate reaches 1.4%.

Header: OMSK, RUSSIA – JANUARY 28, 2020: An employee of the Transmissive Viral Infections Laboratory of the Omsk Research Institute of natural focal infections. The lab has designed a testing system that allows to diagnose coronavirus in 7-8 hours. Yevgeny Sofiychuk/TASS

Source: TASS