MOSCOW – A nurse, holding a needle in her hand, asked me abruptly if I was ready. I said yes. A rapid injection followed, and then instructions to wait half an hour in the hospital corridor for the possibility of anaphylactic shock, which fortunately never came.
Last Monday, I set aside my reservations and made the first dose of Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, called Sputnik V, at a factory outside Moscow from genetically modified cold viruses.
Like so much else in Russia, the deployment of Sputnik V was entangled in politics and propaganda, with President Vladimir V. Putin announcing his approval for use even before the late hearings began. For months, it was looted by Western scientists. Like many Russian citizens who do not trust the new vaccine and have said that they will wait to see how things turn out before they get it themselves, I doubt it.
Consider how the deployment went: With the approval in August, Russian health officials were quick to claim that they had won the vaccine race, just as the country had won the space race with the Sputnik satellite decades ago. In fact, at the time, several other vaccine candidates were further on the test.
A series of misleading announcements followed. Proponents of the vaccine claim that a national vaccination campaign would begin in September and then in November; it only increased last month, not earlier than the vaccination in Britain and the United States.
Then there were suspicions in the foreign report that the Russian government, which was all cautious in medical matters about accusations of poisoning dissidents and doping of Olympic athletes, was now cooking up the books on the results of vaccine tests, perhaps for national pride or marketing.
As a better performance than the alleged competition, Pfizer and the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech reported trial results with more than 91 percent efficacy for their candidate vaccine, and the Kremlin-affiliated financial company, which supports Sputnik V, claims that the trials 92 percent efficiency.
When Moderna then reported 94.1 percent efficiency, the Russian company again claims superiority, saying it achieves 95 percent. Officials then conceded that the results of Sputnik V showed an efficiency rate of 91.4 percent when the trials were completed in the late stages.
But did it matter from the perspective of a recipient? The final reported result still offers a nine out of ten chance of avoiding Covid-19 once the vaccine has taken effect. Skepticism of Western experts has mostly focused on the dubious early approval, not the design of the vaccine, which is similar to the one manufactured by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.
While public fear has not completely subsided, and the developers have yet to release detailed information on adverse events observed during the trials, the Russian government has now vaccinated about one million of its own citizens and exported Sputnik V to Belo- Russia, Argentina and other countries. , suggesting that any harmful side effects overlooked during trials would have now come to light.
In the end, the politicized implementation only led to obscuring the substantial good test results – which turned out to be a bona fide achievement for Russian scientists who continued a long and extensive practice of vaccine development.
In the Soviet era, the breakdown of infectious diseases at home was a public health priority and the export of vaccines to the developing world was an element of diplomacy in the Cold War.
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Answers to your vaccine questions
Although the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, medical workers and residents of long-term care institutions are likely to be first. If you want to understand how this decision is made, this article will help.
Life will only become normal when society as a whole gets enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries approve a vaccine, they will be able to vaccinate at most a few percent of their citizens in the first few months. The unvaccinated majority will still be vulnerable to infection. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines offer strong protection against disease. But it is also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they are infected, because they experience only mild symptoms or not at all. Scientists do not yet know whether the vaccination also blocks the transmission of the coronavirus. For the time being, even vaccinated people will have to wear masks, crowds inside, and so on. Must avoid. Once enough people are vaccinated, it will be very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people who can become infected. Depending on how quickly we as a society reach the goal, life may begin by the fall of 2021 to approach something as normal.
Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that may be approved this month clearly protect people against Covid-19. However, the clinical trials that have yielded these results have not been designed to determine whether vaccines can still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. It remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected by the coronavirus can spread it while experiencing no cough or other symptoms. Researchers will study this question intensively as the vaccines begin. Meanwhile, even vaccinated people will have to think of themselves as possible distributors.
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered like a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection will not be different from what you received before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported serious health problems. But some of them felt transient discomfort, including pains and flu-like symptoms that usually last a day. It is possible that people after the second shot may be planning to take a day off from work or school. Although these experiences are not pleasant, it is a good sign: it is the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and getting a powerful response that will provide long-lasting immunity.
No. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to replenish the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell so that the molecule can slide. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. Each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules at any one time that they produce to make their own proteins. Once those proteins are made, our cells cut the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules that make up our cells can only survive for a few minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is designed to resist the cells’ enzymes a little longer, allowing the cells to make extra viral proteins and trigger a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only take a few days at most before being destroyed.
The Soviet Union and the United States worked together to eliminate smallpox through vaccination. Virology was central to the Soviet Union’s biological weapons program, which continued in secret long after a 1975 treaty banned the weapons.
In 1959, a team of male and female scientists successfully tested the first live poliovirus vaccine, using their own children as the first subjects. It follows a Russian tradition that medical researchers first test potentially harmful products on themselves.
Last spring, the main developer of Sputnik V, Aleksandr L. Gintsburg, followed in this practice by injecting himself even before the announcement that animal trials were over.
Russian promoters have compared the vaccine to the Kalashnikov rifle, which is simple and effective to operate. I was even happy to avoid some of the common side effects of Sputnik V, such as a raging headache or fever.
With many of my fears alleviated, another reason I chose to vaccinate myself with a product of Russian genetic engineering was more basic: it was available. Russian clinics have not been plagued by the lines or logistical snafus reported at vaccinations in the United States and other countries.
In Moscow, the best winter days come in early January, while the country slumbers through a week-long holiday, the traffic becomes thinner and the city’s bubbling chaos makes way for a quiet, snowy beauty. Vaccination sites were also lightly attended.
Russia’s vaccination campaign began with medical workers and teachers and then expanded. It is now open to people over 60 or with underlying conditions that make them vulnerable to worse diseases, and to people working in an extensive list of occupations considered high risk: bank tellers, city workers, professional athletes, buses drivers, police officers and, conveniently for me, journalists. It is unclear whether Russia’s production capacity is sufficient to meet long-term demand.
With so many Russians deeply skeptical about their medical system and vaccine, there is no big rush for the shot for now. The first site I visited while reporting in December closed early because so few people showed up.
In the capital, the vaccine has paradoxically appealed to educated people, a group that has traditionally been a focus of political opposition to Mr. Putin, the main promoter of the vaccine. When a decision was made about health, many rolled up their sleeves.
“I have the second component of Sputnik in my shoulder,” Andrei Desnitsky, an academic at the Institute for Oriental Studies, who recorded his experience with vaccination, wrote on Facebook.
To followers commenting, he said: “Hysterics in the style of ‘You sold out, you villain, to the bloody regime’ and ‘They take us all for idiots’ will be erased. “
Like Mr. Desnitsky, I was willing to take my chances. On a snowy morning at Polyclinic no. 5 I filled out a form about chronic diseases, blood disorders or heart ailments. I showed my press pass as proof of my profession. A doctor asked some questions about allergies. I wait an hour or so for my turn in a hospital corridor with beige tiles.
Galina Chupyl, a 65-year-old municipal worker, was sitting nearby. What did she think to be vaccinated?
“I’m happy, of course,” she said. “Nobody wants to get sick.”
I agreed.