Following Tuesday’s reports that Russia had developed a coronavirus vaccine, the state affirmed that it was being worked on for six years and announced with that it would be made available in November.

Russia’s head of the country’s sovereign wealth fund claimed that Russia had been working on the development of the coronavirus vaccine for six years, despite some questioning its efficacy and safety. 

Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund RDIF said, “We were just fortunate that the coronavirus was very close to MERS, so we pretty much had a ready-to-go vaccine on MERS, studied for two years on MERS (and) slightly modified to be the coronavirus vaccine, and that is the real story, no politics... Russia has always been at the forefront of vaccine research.” 

The recent works in developing a vaccine for Ebola and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) helped Russia create the vaccine against the coronavirus. 

RDIF stated that the country is already prepared to manufacture over 500 million doses of vaccine per year in five countries, and the plan is to ramp-up production capacity even higher.” 

However, the World Health Organisation did not confirm the vaccine as the cure, whilst confirming that several are being developed worldwide. 

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