Little for the coronavirus vaccine; Russia’s vaccination strategy in the spotlight

LONDON – Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to receive a coronavirus on Tuesday, as the plot surrounds the country’s vaccination strategy.

The Kremlin has said it will not reveal the name of the vaccine Putin will receive, but only that it will be one of three gunshots fired by Russia.

“We do not deliberately say what shot the president will receive, noting that all three Russian vaccines are absolutely reliable and effective,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

There are three Russian vaccines – Sputnik V, EpiVacCorona and CoviVac – the last two recently obtained emergency approval.

The Russian president will receive the vaccine on Tuesday night, Peskov added. It is unclear whether he will be filmed receiving the photo, as Peskov noted that Putin did not like the idea of ​​being vaccinated with the camera.

Vaccination comes as the focus falls on the country’s vaccination strategy. On Monday, Putin welcomed the international sales of millions of dollars of the Russian Sputnik V Covid vaccine, but the country’s own launch seems slow and contrasts sharply with the large number of vaccines destined for the international market..

It has been reported that Russia’s own production capacity is low, and Putin seemed to nod. He said Russia needs to step up production of household vaccines and that providing for domestic needs is a priority, according to Reuters.

He noted that 4.3 million people in the country have already received two doses of the vaccine. This is substantially higher than, for example, the United Kingdom, which has so far administered 2.3 million people in both doses, but Russia was the first country in the world to approve a vaccine against coronavirus (Sputnik V) in August 2020. – The UK approved the first shooting in early December.

Russia has a number of logistical challenges to overcome when launching a vaccine. It is the largest country in the world and has a population of about 144 million people spread over a territory that stretches across Europe and North Asia.

In early March, Putin noted that all but nine of the Russian regions began implementing the vaccine, with delays in “logistics, distribution (and) location problems,” the Moscow Times reported.

Global data on vaccination programs show that Russia remains with many other countries in its own domestic development, with the number of single doses given in Russia well above the number given in Bangladesh, according to Our World in Data.

Vaccination data are more obvious, given that Russia has been hit so hard by the pandemic: it has the fourth highest number of cases in the world (over 4.4 million) and more than 94,000 people have died due to Covid in the country , according to the state. at Johns Hopkins University.

Another important issue that hinders Russia’s development is the hesitation of the vaccine among its citizens. Daragh McDowell, Europe’s chief executive and Russia’s chief analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC that the country’s lower number of vaccinations was “probably much more the result of the unavailability of popular skepticism about the vaccine than the lack of supply.”

He noted that the latest data from the Levada Center, an independent poll in Russia, suggests that only 30% of Russians “are willing to get vaccinated, a number that has actually fallen since last year.”

“This is mainly due to concerns about side effects and that the vaccine has not been tested enough – in other words, while the Kremlin has gained a propaganda boost since the vaccine was first released, this has been to the detriment of doubts about to his safety, “McDowell noted.

Sputnik V was initially authorized only in Russia for people between the ages of 18 and 60, which means that Putin, who is 68, was too old to receive it. Other studies in the elderly have found that the vaccine is safe in people over the age of 60 and yet that the age group can now get the shot.

“The fact that Putin waited so long to be vaccinated himself will not go unnoticed and will contribute to these doubts,” McDowell added.

“The president’s vaccination will convince some Russians of the vaccine’s effectiveness and safety (but) high levels of social distrust and conspiratorial thinking will block its impact.”

He pointed out that the same survey data that showed that 30% of Russians were willing to be vaccinated showed that almost two-thirds believed that Covid was artificially developed as a biological weapon.

Another aspect of the Russian vaccination program that attracts attention is the large number of international sales of its vaccine. On Monday, Putin confirmed that Russia had signed international sales agreements for Sputnik V doses for 700 million people.

RDIF, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund that supported the development and deployment of Sputnik V, said Tuesday that Sputnik V has now been approved in 56 countries, with Vietnam being the latest member on the list. Several Eastern European countries, such as Hungary and Slovakia, have also ordered doses of Sputnik V.

Meanwhile, Europe’s drug regulator began a continuous review of Sputnik V earlier this month.

McDowell of Verisk Maplecroft pointed out that while exports of 700 million doses were “an extremely ambitious number”, it probably includes products produced abroad, in India and South Korea, for example, under license.

Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine was approved by Russia’s health regulator in August last year before clinical trials were completed, prompting skepticism among experts that it may not meet strict safety and efficacy standards. Some experts claimed that the Kremlin was eager to win the race to develop a Covid vaccine, an accusation it has made in other countries. Russia has repeatedly said its vaccine is the target of anti-Russian sentiment.

Russia seemed justified in early February, when an interim analysis of the Phase 3 clinical trials of the shooting, which involved 20,000 participants, was published in the medical journal The Lancet. The vaccine was found to be 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 infection.

In a companion article in the Lancet, Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading, England, noted that “the development of the Sputnik V vaccine has been criticized for inappropriate haste. But the result reported here is clear and the scientific principle of vaccination is demonstrated, which means that another vaccine can join the fight to reduce the incidence of Covid-19. “