Is Russian COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Sputnik V’ Safe? Fauci Has ‘Serious Doubts’

The world’s first coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, has been approved by Russia after under just two months of testing in humans, which has triggered a global debate questioning the safety and efficacy of the shot.

Even America’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has said that he hopes but seriously doubts that the Russian coronavirus vaccine is safe, effective and ready for use in humans.

Russia claims to have won the global race to find the perfect COVID19 vaccine and announced the approval for the world’s first coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday, Aug, 11. The announcement has come just a few months before a coronavirus vaccine is expected to be available worldwide, with many candidates from across the world being tested for safety and efficacy in large-scale clinical trials in humans.

It is known that Russia has not complete large-scale and widespread testing of its coronavirus vaccine and is the race to launch a shot, has approved the candidate without having significant data in place supporting the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

The Russian officials, including Putin, have claimed that the COVID19 vaccine approved by Moscow is safe and effective. The Russian President in fact said that one of his daughters received the shot as a part of human trials and felt great afterward.

In his comments, Fauci emphasized that the U.S. already has a lot of coronavirus virus candidates being tested to check the efficacy and safety in humans before it is rolled out and if it was okay for them to hurt a lot of people, they can roll out a vaccine as early as next week.

"If we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people or giving them something that doesn't work, we could start doing this, you know, next week if we wanted to,” he said. "But that's not the way it works."

He added that he has not seen the evidence but he really hopes that Russia has found a coronavirus vaccine that is safe and effective but he "seriously doubts that they've done that."

The infectious disease expert said that he may be questioned why America is not winning the race and countries like Russia and China are approving COVID19 vaccines. But the U.S. has a way of doing things and it cares about the overall safety and efficacy profile before anything is made available for use.