Russia reports more than 5,000 new coronavirus cases

Russia reported 5,065 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Friday, bringing its nationwide tally to 912,823, the fourth highest caseload in the world.

Russia’s coronavirus crisis response center said 114 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing its official death toll to 15,498.

This comes as the Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday, August 11th, that his country has succeeded to develop a vaccine that “forms stable cell and antibody immunity” against the COVID-19.

Speaking at a government meeting, Putin said: “As far as I know, this morning for the first time in the world a vaccine against the novel coronavirus infection was registered.”

The vaccine still has to complete final trials but Russia’s move could pave the way for mass vaccination.

Reuters reported that the vaccine’s approval by the health ministry comes before the start of a larger trial involving thousands of participants, commonly known as a Phase III trial.

Such trials, which require a certain rate of participants catching the virus to observe the vaccine’s effect, are normally considered essential precursors for a vaccine to receive regulatory approval.

The worldwide cases of Coronavirus reached 20,924,603 with the U.S. topping the list by 5,254,171 cases followed by Brazil with 3,224,876 and India with 2,461,190.

Out of 20,924,603 cases around the world, 759,716 of them died so far while 12,999,228 others have recovered.

(With inputs from Reuters)