MOSCOW, May 29 (RIA Novosti) - Bird flu vaccine tests on human volunteers will be completed by the end of the summer, Russia's chief doctor said Monday.
Gennady Onishchenko said: "We will need to see how the volunteers' immune system reacts. This will take about five weeks. The trials should be over by the middle of August."
He said only a limited amount the vaccine would be produced since it was not based on a pandemic strain that could be transferred from human to human.
"We are simply training our personnel in how to handle this strain," he said. "The trials will help reduce the time that it would take to make a real vaccine should a bird flu pandemic break out."
Clinical trials of the bird flu vaccine, which will be injected intravenously or subcutaneously, will begin May 30 on 240 volunteers.
