CNN has acquired exclusive access to the facility, now home to Generium Pharmaceutical, which has been contracted to scale up production of the Russian vaccine against Covid-19, Sputnik V.
The large high-tech complex is one of seven new production centers across the country.
Every step in the production process had to be carefully designed and calibrated, including extensive water filtration systems, to produce the brand new vaccine.
“In principle, the manufacturing process was known on a small laboratory scale, but making it on a large industrial scale is a different universe,” Dmitry Poteryaev, chief scientific officer at Generium, told CNN.
“You can not just go from one liter of bioreactor to 100 liters or 1000 or 1 ton of bioreactor. Every process is different, the oxygenation is different, the mass balance is different,” he explained.
He said the problems had been overcome a few months ago and the factory was now ready to further increase production.
“Now we produce several million doses every month and hope to get an even higher amount, maybe like 10 or 20 million a month,” Poteryaev said.
In hollow refrigerators, with even colder temperatures than the icy winter, the bottles of Sputnik V are packed in crates and awaiting distribution. We are told that each vial has its own unique QR code so that it can be redirected to individual patients no matter where they are in the world.
Hesitation at home
It is a country with one of the highest numbers of Covid-19 infections in the world – more than 4.1 million cases and count. But it also has one of the world’s highest rates of vaccine. One recent poll, published by the independent Levada Center, indicated that only 38% of Russians are willing to be vaccinated.
Earlier this month, one of the key scientists behind the development of the vaccine said that about 2.2 million people – less than 2% of the Russian population – had received at least the initial dose of the two-shot regimen.
According to monitoring groups, the conspiracy theories against vaccine are circulating on the internet and are seen by millions of people in Russia. Alexander Arkhipova, a social anthropologist at a state university known as RANEPA, told CNN that many Russians have a cultural tendency to distrust the medical institution, which is considered a controlling arm of government, in the private life of people.
Another reason for doubt may be that President Vladimir Putin said that his daughter had been vaccinated, but that he should not take the chance yet.
The Kremlin has erased questions about the question, saying Putin has scheduled a vaccination and that the country will be informed when he is finally vaccinated.
But in a country where many people look to the Kremlin strongman for his guidance, his abstinence from the Sputnik V front is striking and discouraging.
Ice Cream Incentives
All adults without underlying health conditions in Russia are now eligible for free vaccination. But progress in Moscow, for example, is painfully slow. According to Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, so far less than 600,000 have been vaccinated in a city of more than 12 million people.
So the pressure is on to increase the numbers.
And pop-up clinics are being set up across Moscow – the center of the Russian coronavirus pandemic.
There is one in the luxury shopping center GUM, some distance from the snow-covered Red Square, where Muscovites can view the latest fashions in expensive boutiques before heading upstairs to get Sputnik V. They even get free ice cream with every vaccination – chocolate covered vanilla.
Staff told CNN that they vaccinate about 200 people every day. There are hundreds more.
Another clinic was set up in a trendy food hall, Depo Moscow, to encourage vaccination after a lunch on street food or sushi dinner.
For lovers of classical music, there is even one in Helikon, a prestigious opera house in Moscow, where strict tones of recorded tenors ring through the speakers as people wait for their vaccination.
Some people get the message that the vaccine has the best chance of surviving the pandemic.
Vadim Svistunov (84) and his 86-year-old wife Nonna went to the opera house three weeks later for the first vaccine shot and the booster.
“We do not want to go there yet,” Svistunov told CNN, pointing to the sky. “We are not in a hurry,” he said.