This is putting yourself on the line ! Some self belief here -
Even before Russia’s brand-new COVID-19 vaccine was tested on monkeys, the director of the institute that made it had injected himself. So had his staff.
Fortunately, the shot has proven both safe and effective, boasting one of the highest efficacy rates of any COVID vaccine on the market.
Sputnik’s design is “notably clever”, for using one type of adenovirus in the first shot and another in the second.
It’s the same reason scientists think pairing an AstraZeneca shot with different kinds of vaccines, such as Pfizer for the second dose, hasproven so effective in mixed trials overseas.
Just as American Jonas Salk tested his polio vaccine on himself and his family, the Russian researchers who developed the first oral inoculation for polio tested it first on their own children, who, as it happens, have now grown up to be virologists working on COVID vaccines themselves.
At the well-respected Gamaleya Institute in Moscow where Sputnik V was made the 100-odd scientists who injected themselves with the vaccine back in April 2020 reported no ill effects. That included institute director Alexander Ginzburg who said the team did it to reduce the chance that they themselves would fall sick. They made the vaccine so fast, he said, by tweaking one they were already working on for MERS, another dangerous coronavirus cousin of both COVID and SARS.
