Europe should be open to taking over and using Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, according to Kirill Dmitriev, executive director of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, amid what he described as the “Pfizer monopoly” across the region.
Dmitriev at RDIF, which supported the development of the coronavirus vaccine in Russia, told CNBC that the vaccine could be useful in Europe, where Covid immunization programs have progressed slowly.
“It’s very important for Europe to be open to different vaccines, because it’s not good to have a Pfizer monopoly in Europe,” Dmitriev told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Monday.
“It’s good to have AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and other vaccines so that prices are reasonable and Europe is not subject to a monopoly on vaccines that could be being created.”
The coronavirus vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, as well as the vaccine from Pfizer and the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech are currently the predominant photographs used in Europe. However, the former has been the subject of investigations by the European Medicines Agency due to concerns that it could be linked to a small number of rare but serious incidents of blood clotting in post-vaccinated people.
Similar concerns have affected the Johnson & Johnson coup (which will soon be launched in the EU), but following investigations, the EMA considered that the benefits of both coups outweigh the risks.
There are now anecdotal reports of Europeans refusing the AstraZeneca shot, which is cheaper to produce and buy, and asking for the Pfizer-BioNTech shot instead. CNBC contacted Pfizer in response to Dmitriev’s comments.
Meanwhile, there has been a dispute in the EU over the potential use of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, which was initially the subject of doubts about its clinical data and safety standards and has more recently been seen as a geopolitical tool. to Russia, which has sold the vaccine to various countries around the world, especially to its allies.
The mid-term review of the Phase 3 clinical trials of the shooting, which involved 20,000 participants and was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet in early February, found that it was 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 infection. The EMA is currently evaluating clinical data before a possible vaccine authorization, which would pave the way for the use of the vaccine in the EU.
Several Eastern European countries have expressed interest in buying or already purchasing and implementing vaccine doses, including Hungary, despite the fact that it has not yet been approved by the EMA.
Such purchases were not without controversy: the Slovak drug agency, for example, claimed in early April that the doses of Sputnik V it received were not the same as those examined by international experts. Russia responded by asking Slovakia to return hundreds of thousands of doses, citing breaches of contract, Reuters reported.
The CEO of RDIF said that negotiations on the supply of vaccine took place with Germany “and a few other countries”, although he did not name them. However, it is known that France has been in talks with Russia about possible acquisitions of the vaccine.
Dmitriev said he hoped the EMA would complete the photo assessment by June. “We are very clear that we can provide 50 million doses of vaccine … from June to September in Europe.”