Deployment of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine elicits a careful and mixed response

Russia faces international criticism for approving vaccines that have not been highly tested among tens of thousands of people, and until the study is completed, national and international experts will use it extensively. I warned against it.

Despite these warnings, authorities began offering it to certain high-risk groups, such as front-line healthcare professionals, within weeks of approval. Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamalaya Institute, which developed the vaccine, said last week more than 150,000 Russians got the vaccine.

One of the winners was Dr. Alexander Zatsepin, an ICU specialist in Voronezh, a city 500 km (310 miles) south of Moscow, who was vaccinated in October.

“We’ve been working with COVID-19 patients since March, but I’m worried about getting my family infected every day when I get home, so when some opportunity emerges to protect them and me, I thought it should be used, “he said.

However, Zatosepin said he has taken precautions against infection because the vaccine’s efficacy has not been studied.

“I’m not absolutely confident yet,” he said.

After the UK announced on December 2 that it had approved a vaccine developed by pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech, President Vladimirputin instructed authorities to launch a large-scale vaccination campaign. This is a sign of Moscow’s enthusiasm for being at the forefront of the fight against the pandemic.

Russia approved the vaccine after being tested by only a few dozen people and advertised that it received the “first in the world” go-ahead. The developers named it “Sputnik V”. This represents the Soviet Union’s launch of the world’s first satellite in 1957 during the Cold War.

More than the pride of the country is at stake. Russia has recorded more than 2.7 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 48,000 deaths and wants to avoid a blockade that would cause new damage to the economy.

On December 2, Putin cited a dose target of more than 2 million doses over the next few days. Despite such a limited supply to a country of 146 million people, Moscow quickly expanded its qualifications. Shots are provided free of charge to everyone in both state and private health care or educational facilities. Social and municipal workers; retail and service workers; and art people.

The European Medicines Agency said it had not been requested by vaccine manufacturers to consider permitting its use in the EU, but some data is shared with the World Health Organization. UN agencies usually do not approve the vaccine itself, but wait for regulators to join first. Russian vaccines have been reported to be considered for use in WHO-led global efforts to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine to poorer countries.

Unlike the UK, where the first shot is aimed at the elderly, Sputnik V is aimed at people aged 18-60 who are not chronically ill and are not pregnant or breastfeeding.

The developers said the study data suggested that the vaccine was 91% effective. This is a conclusion based on 78 infections among about 23,000 participants. This is far less than the cases accumulated by Western pharmaceutical companies during the final test before analyzing candidate efficacy, and no significant demographics or other details from the study have been published.

Some experts say that such effectiveness rates stimulate optimism, but public confidence can be an issue.

Judy Twig, a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University who specializes in global health, said: I will gladly accept it in Russia. “

A poll conducted in October by Russia’s top independent pollster, Levada Center, showed that 59% of Russians did not want to get a shot, even if it was offered free of charge. It was.

Dennis Volkov, a sociologist and deputy director of the Levada Center, said respondents cited unfinished clinical trials, the vaccine was “live” and Russia was still working on the vaccine while others were still working on it. He said he was skeptical of the allegations that he was vaccinated first.

Some healthcare professionals and teachers interviewed by The Associated Press expressed skepticism about the vaccine because it was not well tested.

Dr. Yekaterina Kasyanova of the Kemerovo region of Siberia said she wasn’t trusting enough to take a shot and advised her mother, a teacher, not to take it. “The vaccine is a few months old …. No long-term side effects are known and its effectiveness has not been proven.”

Dzhamilya Kryazheva, a teacher in Krasnogorsk near Moscow, repeated that feeling.

“I’m not going to experiment with my body. I have three kids,” she said.

For other healthcare professionals, the choice to get vaccinated was easy.

“People are dying here every day. They carry corpses every day. What should we think about?” Said Dr. Marina Pecherkina, an infectious disease specialist in the city of Vladivostok in the Far East. She got her shot in October for her daily work with a coronavirus patient.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobianin said more than 6,000 people had been injected during the first five days of vaccination, which began on December 5. In some cases, this is because the vaccine needs to be stored at -18 ° C (-0.4 ° Fahrenheit), and each vial contains 5 doses. Once thawed, it should be administered or discarded within 2 hours.

Deployment outside Moscow and the surrounding area seems to be much slower, and Health Minister Mikhail Murashko has declared that all areas began vaccination on December 15.

According to media reports, there may be a problem with scaling up the production and distribution of Sputnik V. This complicates manufacturing because it uses two different adenovirus vectors in the two-shot regimen. In addition, cold storage and transportation makes it difficult to travel across vast countries.

There was also a confusing signal as to whether the recipient should consume alcohol. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said vaccinated people should refrain from drinking alcohol for three days before and after the shooting.

Some Siberian health workers who received the vaccine later reported that they had been infected with the virus, but health officials said they had not had enough time to develop the antibody.

Dr. Yevgenia Alexeyeva, in Tomsk, Siberia, was virus-positive 12 days after the second shot. Alexeyeva said he was not surprised by the results and did not shake his confidence in the vaccine.

“Vaccines do not guarantee that a person will not be infected, but it should protect us from the outbreak of serious cases,” said Alexeyeva.

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Vladimir Kondrasov and Anatoly Kozlov of Moscow and Tatiana Salimowa of Tomsk contributed.

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Follow the Associated Press pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak