Russia’s new coronavirus vaccine, which has not completed full trial testing, could reduce people’s trust in future vaccines if it’s unsafe or ineffective, Germany’s health minister warned on Wednesday.
President Vladimir Putin’s government announced on Tuesday that Russia has extended regulatory approval to a vaccine that has yet to complete its final trials.
When asked about the vaccine, which Russia is calling “Sputnik V” to reference the world’s first satellite that the Soviet Union created, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said that vaccination efforts should focus less on “being first somehow” and more on creating “an effective, tested and therefore safe vaccine,” according to Reuters.
"It can be dangerous to start vaccinating millions, if not billions, of people too early because it could pretty much kill the acceptance of vaccination if it goes wrong, so I'm very skeptical about what's going on in Russia," Spahn told the German radio station Deutschlandfunk.
“I would be pleased if we had an initial, good vaccine but based on everything we know — and that’s the fundamental problem, namely that the Russians aren’t telling us much — this has not been sufficiently tested,” he continued.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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