Aug 14, 2020
Russia made headlines this week with a purported COVID-19 vaccine that the country is already planning to administer to frontline healthcare workers, teachers, and the military. But the candidate skipped Phase III clinical trials and no scientific data around its development or efficacy has been published to date. In a bonus episode, Stephen Morrison, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Global Health Policy Center, talks with Stephanie Desmon about Russia’s vaccine, the political motivations behind it, why declaring an early victory is so problematic, and what the world might have to consider if the vaccine turns out to be successful.