Here’s one way to get mass participation in your experimental vaccine clinical trials: Don’t call it experimental, and don’t call it a trial.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made headlines Tuesday by announcing that the country had developed and registered the world’s first coronavirus vaccine. In a televised video conference with government ministers, he said the new Gam-Covid-Vac Lyo, developed by Russian scientists at Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, was so safe and effective that his daughter and a top government official have already taken it. In touting the new drug, he insisted it had passed “all needed checks” despite the fact it hasn’t undergone phase 3 trials—a fact that has horrified vaccine experts in the U.S. who are trying to parse the science from the PR spin.
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