Second phase of A/H1N1 flu vaccine clinical tests starts in St Petersburg

Thirty volunteers, including Flu Institute Director, Academician Oleg Kiselyov, institute staff members and healthy residents of St. Petersburg, were inoculated with the inactivated vaccine.

"This is not a PR campaign, but a sincere wish to prove the security of the new antidote and the necessity of inoculations amid the global spread of the new virus," Kiselyov told Itar-Tass.

The volunteers were inoculated with the live vaccine on September 10. The results of the first test will be available by October 10, and the second test will last for 56 days.

"Clinical tests of live and inactivated vaccines are necessary to affirm the efficiency, security and acceptability of the new vaccine," he said.

Once the tests are over, industrial production will be approved and inoculation of average people will begin, Kiselyov said.

Russia's first A/H1N1 flu vaccine was been produced at the Immunopreparat pharmaceutical plant in Ufa, Bashkortostan, plant press secretary Guzel Yusupova told Itar-Tass earlier. She said the vaccine was called Pandeflu; Kazinform cites ITAR-TASS.

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