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Coronavirus pandemic

Production of vaccine against coronavirus may begin in August, says deputy PM

To date, 553,301 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 304,342 patients having recovered from the disease

© Evgeniy Sofiychuk/TASS

MOSCOW, June 18./TASS/. The end of clinical trials of a vaccine against coronavirus and the start of its large-scale production is planned for August-September 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova told journalists on Thursday.

"Vektor [Institute] and their other colleagues are doing their best, and they are trying to be ready by August-September, so that we have a possibility to preventively protect the population, first of all," the deputy prime minister said. The schedule that has just been approved in line with an instruction from the president, "it envisages August - the end of the first trials, and then the start of full-scale production in August—September," she said.

Earlier, Golikova said that as to the emergence of a vaccine on the market already this year, hopes were pinned on the Gamalei National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, the state-run Vektor Research Center, St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Sera and the Federal Medical Biological Agency.

To date, 553,301 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 304,342 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 7,478 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.

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