Russia's CoviVac vaccine dossier submitted vaccine for WHO prequalification

The Chumakov Federal Scientific Center for Research and Development of Immune and Biological Products of the Russian Academy of Sciences has submitted a vaccine dossier to the World Health Organization (WHO) for prequalification of its CoviVac vaccine, the Center’s director, Aidar Ishmukhametov, said in a televised interview with Rossiya-24 channel on Wednesday.

"We have submitted documents to the WHO for so-called prequalification. It is a long enough road to be able to vaccinate, as I believe, the third world later on when we cope with this ourselves," he said.

Ishmukhametov said that the dossier was submitted to the WHO last week. "The documents were submitted last week. Prequalification is a long process, it is too early to talk about timing," TASS cited him as saying/

The Chumakov Center’s inactivated whole-virion CoviVac vaccine was registered with the Russian Health Ministry on February 19. Whole-virion vaccines are based either on artificially weakened viruses incapable of causing a disease or killed (inactivated) viruses. It was Russia’s third vaccine certified for mass use.