“The Russian Vaccine is Foolish and Reckless” : Experts Criticise and Raise Serious Concerns

After President Vladimir Putin announced the launch of Sputnik V, the coronavirus vaccine, experts from around the world are sceptical. They have raised several concerns regarding the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Putin had however, said that the vaccine works “effectively enough” and was “proven efficient.” But concerns have been blooming around the vaccine as only two phases of the trials have been completed by the country. The final phase of trials which must involve testing thousands of people, has been conveniently skipped.
A systems biologist at University College London’s Genetics Institute, Francois Balloux said, “The Russian vaccine gamble is reckless and foolish, whether ‘it works’ or not. There is a lot of mistrust of vaccines for various reasons and we don’t want to feed into it. Being first isn’t really important. If there is a vaccine that ends up having serious side effects, we will not be able to convince people to trust it, and possibly other vaccines as well, so we really don’t want to make a mistake here.”
“In phase 3, you can begin testing on thousands or tens of thousands of people, and you start to build up an understanding of any rare side effects. If you only vaccine a few hundred people, you won’t see that,” criticised Eleanor Riley, a professor of Immunology and infectious diseases from Scotland.
Russian reports as of now suggest that the first two phases of the vaccine trials have been successful and that it has been inducing an immune response against the novel coronavirus. However, according to Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which is financing the vaccine has said that the phase 3 trials will begin this month. No additional information has been confirmed.