‘Sputnik V’ ‘, the Russian coronavirus vaccine that has not even convinced Russia

While coronavirus vaccines developed in the West are received with emotion and enthusiasm, The Russian-made version has found a disparate answer. Some Moscow clinics that offer it to health professionals and teachers, the first on the list, remain empty, according to reports.

Members of the Kremlin and state-controlled media introduced the Sputnik vaccine as a great milestone when approved on August 11th. But among Russians, hopes that the drug would change the course of the coronavirus crisis have been mixed with objections and skepticism, Reflecting concerns about how accelerated the launch of the vaccine when trials were still being conducted to ensure its effectiveness and safety.

Russia was criticized internationally for authorizing a vaccine that it’s not over advanced trials among tens of thousands of people, and experts both at home and abroad warned against its widespread use until the studies were completed.

Despite these warnings, authorities began offering her to some high-risk groups as front-line medical personnel, weeks after the drug was authorized. Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamaleya Institute that developed the vaccine, said last week that more than 150,000 Russians had received it.

One of them was Dr. Alexander Zatsepin, an Intensive Care Specialist in Voronezh, a city 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Moscow, who was vaccinated in October.

“We have been working with COVID-19 patients since March, and every day, when we get home, we worry about infecting our relatives. So when an opportunity arose to protect them and myself, I thought that he had to take advantage of it ”, he pointed out.

“The vaccine is a few months old (…) The long-term effects are unknown, its effectiveness has not been proven.”

Yekaterina Kasyanova

Russian doctor of the Union Alliance of Doctors

However, Zatsepin said he was still taking precautions against contagion because studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine still they are not finished.

“Yet there is no absolute trust”, He said.

After Britain announced on December 2 that it had authorized a vaccine developed by pharmaceuticals Pfizer and BioNTech, Russian President Vladimir Putin told authorities they would begin 1 large-scale vaccination campaign, showing interest in Moscow to be at the forefront of the fight against the pandemic.

Russia authorized its vaccine after trying it just in a few dozen people, And presented it as the “first in the world” to be approved. The developers called it “Sputnik V”, in reference to the world’s first satellite, launched by the Soviet Union. in 1957 during the Cold War.

Each ampoule or vial contains five doses. Once thawed, they should be administered within two hours or discarded.

At stake is something else than national pride. Russia has registered more than 2.7 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 48,000 deaths, and wants to prevent another harmful quarantine in its economy.

On December 2, Putin set a goal of a few two million doses in the following days. Despite the limited supply for a country of 146 million inhabitants, Moscow immediately expanded the list of people who could receive it. the vaccine it’s free for any worker in educational or health institutions, both state and private, as well as for social and municipal workers, retail and service workers, and artists.

For poor countries

The European Medicines Agency said not having received a request of manufacturers to apply for authorization in the European Union, but some data have been shared with the World Health Organization. The UN agency does not usually authorize vaccines on its own, and awaits the verdict from regulatory agencies. According to media reports, the use of the Russian vaccine is being considered in a global project led by the WHO to distribute vaccines against COVID-19 in the poorest countries.

Unlike Britain, where the first to be vaccinated are the elderly, Sputnik V ha prioritized to people between 18 and 60 years without chronic diseases and who are not pregnant or breastfeeding.

Its developers have said trial data suggest the drug has 91% effectiveness, A finding based on 78 infections among nearly 23,000 participants. They are far less positive than those accumulated by Western pharmaceuticals in their latest trials before analyzing the effectiveness of their vaccine candidates. They have not been published important data of the Russian study, as the demographic profile of the participants.

Some experts say that this rate of effectiveness produces optimism, but that public confidence it could be a problem.

“I don’t care so much if Sputnik V is unsafe or less effective than we need it to be,” said Judy Twigg, a political science professor at Virginia’s Commonwealth University and a global health specialist. I’m worried that people in Russia should be willing to put up with it. ”

A poll conducted in October by the Levada Center, Russia’s leading independent pollster, showed that 59% of Russians he was not willing to vaccinate even if it was free.

Denis Volkov, a sociologist and deputy director of the Levada Center, said respondents had cited unfinished clinical trials, noting that the vaccine was “half cooked” and that they were suspicious of claims that Russia was the first country in the world to have a vaccine while others continued to work on theirs.

Some medical workers and professors interviewed by The Associated Press expressed his skepticism for the vaccine because the tests have not been completed.

Dr. Yekaterina Kasyanova, from the Siberian region of Kemorovo, said that it did not seem reliable enough to him and he had advised his mother, a teacher, not to wear it either.

“The vaccine is a few months old (…) They don’t know the effects in the long run, its effectiveness has not been proven, ” he said.

For other health workers, the decision to vaccinate was easy.

“People die here every day. Every day we remove corpses. What do you think?” Said Dr. Marina Pecherkina, an infectious disease specialist in the eastern city of Vladivostok. She was vaccinated in October because he works daily with coronavirus patients.

The mayor of Moscow, Sergei SobyaninHe said more than 6,000 people received the injections in the first five days of vaccinations, which began on December 5th.

But some media reports about the first days of campaigning in Moscow they showed empty clinics and health workers offering vaccines to anyone who arrives. In some cases, this was due to the fact that the drug must be stored at 18 degrees Celsius below zero (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit), and each vial contains five doses. Once thawed, they must be administered in two hours or reject.

Deployment outside and around Moscow seemed to go much more slowly. Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said all regions had started the process on December 15.

According to media, there could be problems to scale the manufacture and distribution of the drug. Sputnik V uses two adenovirus vectors for the system of two doses, Which complicates production. In addition, low temperature requirements for storage and transportation they complicate their distribution for the huge country.

There have also been conflicting messages about whether patients they may consume alcohol. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said the vaccinated people had avoid drinking three days before and after of injections.

Several medical workers in Siberia who were vaccinated later reported have contracted the virus, But health officials said not enough time had passed for them to develop antibodies.

The author is a journalist for the Associated Press

Vladimir Kondrashov and Anatoly Kozlov in Moscow, and Tatyana Salimova in Tomsk contributed to this office.

ap