After volunteering to be a guinea pig for Russia’s vaccine against the coronavirus, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will not receive the inoculation – offered by Vladimir Putin as a “sustainable immunity” against COVID-19 until his safety is guaranteed.
Putin announced that Russia is registering the first COVID-19 vaccine in the world following its development at the Gamaleya Institute outside Moscow.
In a show of solidarity with another strongman leader, Duterte – who once described Putin as his “hero” – said he would be willing to take part in trials, and that “I will inject it in public” . Experiment with me, that’s fine. ‘
Despite Duterte’s initial enthusiasm for the vaccine, named Sputnik V, his spokesman has now said he will not receive it until after May 1, 2021. That is weeks after the Russian-funded phase of three clinical trials in the Philippines is coming to an end.
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“May 1 is like the PSG [presidential security group] can allow him, once all the required tests are ready, ‘Duterte’s spokesman Harry Roque told reporters.
He said the Philippines would work with Russian experts to examine the results of phase one and two tests before embarking on the more extensive phase three trials.
The Philippines has accepted Russia’s offer to participate in the production of the vaccine. It is currently struggling to contain the pandemic, with more than 147,500 cases and more than 2,400 deaths as of Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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J. Stephen Morrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told CNBC that Putin’s offer to Duterte was “playing on the fear within lower-income and lower-middle-income countries that rich countries would shut down all supplies of faxes to these other big stores.” “
However, there is a lot of skepticism policy and within the medical institution expressed about Russia’s claims to the vaccine and the speed of its development.
Russian Public Health Minister Mikhail Murashko dismissed the concerns as “absolutely baseless.”
Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, told national radio that “it can be dangerous to vaccinate millions, if not billions, of people prematurely, as it can pretty much kill the acceptance of vaccination if it goes wrong.”
Meanwhile, top American virus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said National Geographic: “I hope the Russians have actually proven definitively that the vaccine is safe and effective. I seriously doubt they did.”
Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at the UK’s Southampton University, is worried that public confidence would be damaged if a licensed vaccine had significant side effects that were not recovered due to a raging process, especially as the Russian claims were based on “a small investigation.”
“We need confidence in science, and we need to be open and transparent with the progress of the vaccine candidates. It’s not just about science, public communication is also vital. A bad fax could make this communication much harder,” Head said. Newsweek.
The graph provided by Statista below shows the spread of coronavirus around the world.
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