Russia's Gamaleya research institute will start clinical trials of its antibody-based drug against the coronavirus on people at the end of the year, the medication should help significantly reduce mortality from COVID-19, institute chief Alexander Gintsburg said.
"I hope that at the end of this year we will proceed to the first phase of the clinical trials, I mean it will be tested on people. We will certainly check safety first. The drug will be administered in hospitals, to patients who were admitted with this infection," Gintsburg said.
The director of the Gamaleya institute, which developed the Sputnik V vaccine, clarified that the drug would help in cases that currently result in patients' death, which means the death rate should decrease sharply.
"By the middle of 2022, we will have completed the second and the third stages of the clinical trials," Sputnik cited him as saying.
Developers will try to make the drug affordable, Gintsburg pledged.
