MOSCOW, August 11. /TASS/: The Russian vaccine against COVID-19 has become subject to coordinated information attacks, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), told an online conference on Tuesday.
"Coordinated and carefully prepared information attacks on the Russian vaccine are trying to discredit and hide the correctness of the Russian approach to drug development," he said.
According to Dmitriev, "a politicized approach to the Russian vaccine on the part of a number of Western countries endangers the lives of their citizens."
In the development and trials of the vaccine, Russia used a proven platform, which had been tested on thousands of people over the past six years, the official stressed.
"Meanwhile, a number of countries are trying to prove in the case of 30,000-40,000 patients the safety of fundamentally new approaches towards creation of vaccines, which, in fact, need to be tested for several years. The fact is that none of such vaccines created with the use of these new solutions has been registered in the world. They have not studied their long-term effects on human body, including fertility. Thinking that such approaches are safe in the long term without carefully studying them, in particular their long-term consequences, is a dangerous illusion," Dmitriev stressed.
On August 11, the Russian Health Ministry registered the first COVID-19 vaccine in the world. The vaccine was developed by the Gamaleya Federal Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology and the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
