Russian Elite Given Experimental COVID-19 Vaccine Since April

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Scores of Russia's business and political elite have been given early access to an experimental vaccine against Covid-19, according to people familiar with the effort, as the country races to be among the first to develop an inoculation. Top executives at companies including aluminum giant United Co. Rusal, as well as billionaire tycoons and government officials began getting shots developed by the state-run Gamaleya Institute in Moscow as early as April, the people said. They declined to be identified as the information isn't public.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who recovered from Covid-19 after being hospitalized with the virus in May, said he doesn't know the names of anyone who's received the institute's vaccine. Peskov's comments followed a Health Ministry statement that said only participants in Gamaleya's trials are currently eligible for the jabs. While the new shots are "safe" because they're based on proven vaccines for other diseases, their effectiveness has yet to be determined, according to Sergei Netesov, a former executive at Vector, a state-run virology center in Novosibirsk, Siberia, that's also working on an inoculation. "Those who take it do so at their own risk," Netesov said.

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