Dr. Volker Gerdts, director of VIDO-InterVac. (University of Saskatchewan)

By Logan Stein/CKOM News Staff

Saskatoon COVID-19 researcher responds to Russia’s vaccine announcement

Aug 11, 2020 | 5:45 PM

Russia on Tuesday became the first country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine.

It hasn’t taken long for that decision to be met with a fair amount of skepticism from experts around the world and here at home.

Dr. Volker Gerdts, the director and CEO of VIDO-InterVac, said there’s one important step the Russians have been skipping out on.

“What they haven’t done yet is a Phase 3 trial and that involves thousands of volunteers,” Gerdts said. “That will determine how well this vaccine actually works.”

Gerdts added that based on the information that has been gathered already, the potential vaccine has gone through phases 1 and 2 of testing and passed the required criteria in the process.

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Phase 1 includes smaller testing trials that involve fewer than 100 people. Testing officials would inject the vaccine and test for any side effects that the volunteer might experience.

Phase 2 analyzes the immune response of the vaccine, with a few hundred more individuals being part of the volunteer process.

“What they have passed so far is the same as what we have seen in different vaccine tests around the world, so (there’s) nothing unusual there,” Gerdts said. “The unusual part of it is the announcement of the Russian president saying that this vaccine is registered, giving it authorized permission to be used.

“I think we need to be careful at the moment. There really isn’t that much information.”

Gerdts added there are many other vaccine candidates out there that are still further advanced than Russia’s vaccine.

“Scientifically this is just as well along as some of the other vaccines,” he said.

VIDO-InterVac has been working for months on a vaccine. It recently announced it has partnered with two Canadian pharmaceutical companies to produce the vaccine candidate Saskatoon researchers are planning to bring to the human phase this fall.

Gerdts has said in past interviews with 650 CKOM that there is a specialized process involved in producing a vaccine candidate for human trials, which he calls “very complicated.”