The Russian Health Supervisory Authority has officially approved conducting clinical tests of bird flu vaccine. The tests will be conducted on 240 volunteers aged above 18 years old and will continue till mid-August.

The volunteers will be inoculated with vaccine drawn from the Vietnamese strain of the virus. After the inoculation they will lead normal life, but they will have to periodically complete special report sheets supplying data on their state of health and body temperature.

If the clinical tests prove successful, production of the vaccine will come on stream.

Earlier experiments with the serum on rodents have shown the vaccine to give 95 percent proof protection against the deadly virus.