Putin to get coronavirus vaccine; Russia’s vaccine strategy in focus

LONDON – Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to receive a coronavirus shot on Tuesday as intrigue surrounds the country’s vaccine strategy.

The Kremlin said it would not disclose the name of the vaccine Putin would receive, but only that it was one of three Russian shots fired.

“We are deliberately not saying what shot the president will get, and note 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 – with the latter two only recently receiving emergency approval.

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

The vaccination comes into the spotlight on the country’s vaccination strategy. Putin on Monday praised international sales of Russian Sputnik V Covid vaccine for a million million dollars, but the country’s own deployment looks sluggish and contrasts sharply with the large number of vaccines destined for the international market..

There are reports that Russia’s own production capacity is low, and Putin appears to be nodding on Monday. He said Russia needed to increase vaccine production for domestic use, and that providing domestic needs was 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 significantly higher than, for example, the United Kingdom, which has so far given about 2.3 million people both doses, but in August 2020 Russia was the first country in the world to approve a coronavirus vaccine (Sputnik V). first shot in early December.

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

In early March, Putin noted that all nine Russian regions had begun deploying the vaccine, with delays related to ‘problems with logistics, distribution (and) locations’, the Moscow Times reported.

Worldwide data on vaccination programs show that Russia keeps many other countries in its own domestic procrastination, with the number of single doses administered in Russia just higher than the number given in Bangladesh, according to Our World in Data.

Vaccination data are becoming more striking as Russia has been hit so hard by the pandemic: it has recorded the fourth highest number of cases in the world (more than 4.4 million) and more than 94,000 people have died in Covid in the country. at Johns Hopkins University.

Another major problem hampering Russia’s deployment is the reluctance of vaccines among its citizens. Daragh McDowell, Europe’s chief and Russia’s chief analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC that the country’s lower vaccination rates were more likely to be due to a lack of willingness on the part of popular skepticism about the vaccine than a lack of supply.

He noted that the latest data from the Levada Center, an independent opinion poll in Russia, indicated that only 30% of Russians were “willing to be vaccinated, a number that has actually declined since last year.”

‘This is mainly due to concerns about side effects and that the vaccine has not been tested enough yet. In other words, although the Kremlin received a propaganda boost to get the vaccine out first, it was the cost of doubting its safety, “McDowell noted.

Sputnik V was initially authorized only in Russia for people 18-60 years old, which means that Putin, who is 68, was too old to receive it. Further trials among senior citizens found, however, that the vaccine is safe in people 60 years and older, and that the age group can now get the chance.

“The fact that Putin has waited so long to be vaccinated himself will not have gone unnoticed and also contributed to this doubt,” McDowell added.

“The vaccination of the president will convince some Russians of the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine (but) high levels of social mistrust and conspiracy will blunt its impact.”

He stressed that the same ballot box data that showed that 30% of Russians were willing to be vaccinated also revealed that almost two-thirds believe that Covid was artificially developed as a biological weapon.

Another aspect of Russia’s vaccination program that is attracting attention is the large number of international sales of the vaccine. Putin confirmed on Monday 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 on Tuesday that Sputnik V has now been approved in 56 countries, with Vietnam the last member of the list. Several countries in Eastern Europe, such as Hungary and Slovakia, have also ordered Sputnik V doses.

Meanwhile, the European Medicines Regulator launched an ongoing review of Sputnik V earlier this month.

Verisk Maplecroft’s McDowell stressed that while the export of 700 million doses is an “extremely ambitious number”, it probably also includes products manufactured abroad, for example in India and South Korea, under license.

The Russian Sputnik V vaccine was approved by the Russian health regulator in August last year before clinical trials were completed, which led experts to say that it did not meet strict safety and efficacy standards. Some experts have argued that the Kremlin is eager to win the race to develop a vaccine for Covid. Russia has repeatedly said its vaccine is the target of anti-Russian sentiment.

Russia appears to have been justified in early February, when an interim analysis of phase 3 clinical trials of the shot, involving 20,000 participants, was published in peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet. The vaccine was found to be 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 infection.

In an accompanying 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 insignificant haste. But the outcome reported here is clear and the scientific principle of vaccination is being demonstrated, which means that another vaccine could now take part in the fight to reduce the incidence of Covid-19. ‘