Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Tuesday said the goal of developing a coronavirus vaccine is not to be first, but to have one that’s safe and effective.
Mr. Azar was reacting to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Russia has developed the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine.
“The point is not to be first with a vaccine — the point is to have a vaccine that is safe and effective for the American people and the people of the world,” Mr. Azar said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “We need transparent data, and it’s got to be Phase 3 data that shows that a vaccine is safe and effective.”
Mr. Putin on Tuesday said that his country had approved the world’s first coronavirus vaccine and that his daughter had been inoculated.
“I hope our foreign colleagues’ work will move as well, and a lot of products will appear on an international market that could be used,” Mr. Putin said.
Russia is expected to move forward with vaccinations while Phase 3 trials, which can involve thousands of people and last for months, continue to progress.
Some were skeptical about the announcement.
“I wouldn’t take it, certainly not outside [a] clinical trial right now,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former head of the Food and Drug Administration, said on CNBC. “It appears that it’s only been tested in several hundred patients at most.”
Last month, American, Canadian and British authorities accused Russian hackers of targeting western companies that are trying to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
