Putin to get the coronavirus vaccine; Russia’s vaccination strategy in the center

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

The Kremlin said it would not reveal the name of the vaccine Putin will receive, only that it would be one of three Russian-made shots.

“We do not want to deliberately say what shot the president will get, noting that the 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, and the latter two have only recently received emergency approval.

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

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

There have been reports that Russia’s own production capacity is low and Putin appeared to agree on Monday. He said Russia needed to increase production of vaccines for domestic use and that the supply of domestic necessities was a priority, according to Reuters.

He noted that 4.3 million people in the country had already received two doses of the vaccine. This is substantially higher than, say, the UK, which has given up to 2.3 million people both doses so far, but Russia was the first country in the world to approve a coronavirus vaccine (Sputnik V) in August 2020; the UK approved the first shot in early December.

Russia has several logistical challenges that need to be overcome when a vaccine is deployed. It is the largest country in the world and has a population of about 144 million people spread across a territory spanning Europe and North Asia.

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

Global data on vaccination programs show that Russia lags behind many other countries in its own domestic deployment, with a number of individual doses administered in Russia that is above the number administered in Bangladesh, according to Our World in Data.

Vaccination data are most noteworthy given that Russia has been so affected by the pandemic: it has recorded the fourth largest number of cases in the world (more than 4.4 million) and more than 94,000 people have died from Covid in the country, at Johns Hopkins University.

Another major problem that makes it difficult for Russia to establish itself is the hesitation of the vaccine among its citizens. Daragh McDowell, Europe’s chief and Russia’s chief analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC that the country’s lowest number of vaccinations is “probably much more the lack of will on the part of popular skepticism about the vaccine than the lack of supply “.

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

“This is mainly due to concerns about side effects and the fact that the vaccine has not been tested enough; that is, while the Kremlin gained a propaganda boost by removing the vaccine first, this was at the expense of doubts about their safety, “McDowell noted.

Sputnik V was initially only allowed in Russia for people aged 18 to 60, meaning that 68-year-old Putin was too old to receive him. However, in other trials conducted in the elderly it was found that the vaccine was safe in people aged 60 years or older and that now the age group can receive the vaccine.

“The fact that Putin has waited so long to vaccinate himself will not have gone unnoticed and will have contributed to those doubts,” McDowell added.

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

He noted that the same survey data showing that 30% of Russians were willing to be vaccinated also revealed that nearly two-thirds believed Covid was artificially developed as a biological weapon.

Another striking aspect of Russia’s vaccine program is the large number of international sales of its vaccine. On Monday, Putin confirmed that Russia had signed international agreements to sell doses of Sputnik V to 700 million people.

RDIF, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund that supported the development and deployment of Sputnik V, said Tuesday that Sputnik V had already been approved in 56 countries, with Vietnam the last to join the list. Several Eastern European countries, such as Hungary and Slovakia, have also ordered doses of Sputnik V.

Meanwhile, the European drug regulator began an ongoing review of Sputnik V earlier this month.

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

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

Russia seemed to be vindicated in early February, when a tentative analysis of the phase 3 clinical trials of the shot, which included 20,000 participants, was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet. The vaccine was found to be 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 infection.

In an article attached to Lancet magazine, 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 undue haste. But the result collected here is clear and the scientist is demonstrated the principle of vaccination, which means that another vaccine can now join the fight to reduce the incidence of Covid-19 “.