Noviye Izvestia cited Yelena Doroshenko, a staff member at St. Petersburg's Flu Research Institute, as saying that the institute was examining a sample of the �5N1 virus strain provided by the World Health Organization.
"We are conducting all the tests on ourselves and our children," Doroshenko said, adding that a famous Russian scientist, Anatoly Smorodintsev, had tested a poliomyelitis vaccine on his granddaughters.
The bird flu vaccine being tested is an inactivated vaccine, which means it presents no danger to people even if the tests fail. The vaccine could be launched by November in the event of an emergency. The institute is negotiating the vaccine's production with an enterprise in Ufa, the capital of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, the paper said.
Experts told the paper that the current outbreak of bird flu in Siberia would die down in 10-15 days, when the temperature starts falling. They said there was virtually no chance that it could spread to European Russia.
However, Doroshenko said the vaccine was urgently needed, adding that the fatality rate of the disease was extremely high at about 50%. "Out of 110 people that have contracted the virus in the world since 1997, 67 people have died," Doroshenko said.
