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FILE PHOTO: A nurse displays a box of Russia’s “Sputnik-V” vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) prepared for inoculation in a post-registration testing stage at a clinic in Moscow, Russia, on September 17, 2020. REUTERS / Tatyana Makeyeva
MOSCOW – Russia is close to completing clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine for pets and mink and expects to begin the regulatory approval process in February, according to Russia’s agricultural safety watchdog.
The Federal Center for Animal Health began developing the vaccine in the spring after authorities established that the virus could be transmitted from humans to some domestic animals.
Russia became the first country to give regulatory approval to a human vaccine, Sputnik V, in August, and is in the process of rolling it out across the country. More than 150,000 people have already received it.
The Russian vaccine for animals is aimed at rabbits, minks, cats and some other animals. The clinical trials will end in January and the approval process is likely to begin in late February, Yulia Melano, assistant to the head of the agricultural safety watchdog, Rosselkhoznadzor, told Reuters.
The World Health Organization has expressed concern about the transmission of the virus between humans and animals. Last month, Denmark ordered the slaughter of all 17 million minks on its farms after concluding that a strain of the virus transmitted from humans to minks had mutated and spread to humans.
Russia has said it believes there will be commercial interest in the new vaccine from its own animal fur breeders and from US and EU companies.
Two cases of COVID-19 have been recorded in cats in Russia, but its mink population has not been affected, according to the watchdog.
Ivan Nesterov, acting head of the state fur company Russian Sable, told Zvezda television station last month that Russia was testing a vaccine and would vaccinate its minks after the process is complete.
The global fur trade, worth more than $ 22 billion a year, is reeling from Denmark’s decision to kill millions of farmed minks.
Concerns about a sudden shortage of mink fur, of which Denmark was the top exporter, has pushed prices up by as much as 30% in Asia, according to the International Fur Federation (IFF).
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