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Moscow Deputy Mayor Anastasia Rakova confirmed that 70 vaccination centers have been opened in the Russian capital on Friday. And since Saturday, the Sputnik V vaccine is offered to Muscovites who belong to certain risk groups: teachers, doctors, social workers.
Rakova told reporters that 170 of these vaccination centers should be operational in Moscow early next year, and the coronavirus vaccination campaign will gain momentum.
The doses of the second vaccine are not enough
As mentioned, Putin publicly announced on December 2 that Russia would prepare 2 million troops in the coming days. Sputnik V.
AFP / “Scanpix” nuotr./Vladimiras Putinas
But a government official and another source in the Russian pharmaceutical industry, Medusa, said Russia currently has only 500,000. full doses of the vaccine: half a million boxes of both vaccines, to be administered to patients one after the other with a break of several weeks.
The first vaccine is said to be produced without problems, but there are serious technical problems in preparing the second.
The Sputnik V vaccine is currently being manufactured on an industrial scale in Russia by two companies, Generium and Binnopharm. They will soon be joined by St. Petersburg-based Biocad, which recently announced that it will produce about one million doses of the vaccine in December.
“Currently, all manufacturers can produce the first vaccine. Several million doses have already been accumulated, at least 10 million can still be produced.
The first vaccine is produced without problems, but there are serious technical problems in preparing the second.
But the doses of the second vaccine are not enough and nobody will say how many there are, “said a representative of a Russian pharmaceutical company.” Meduza “.
Changed the order
During the Sputnik V clinical trials, volunteers received the second vaccine 21 days after the first. Doctors were very careful and did not deviate from that three-week window for more than a day or two.
True, according to a source interviewed by Medusa at one of the country’s pharmaceutical companies, Russian health officials are no longer following the order, and it is unclear why.
“It turns out that you don’t need to wait exactly 21 days for the second vaccination. The interval can be up to 50 days, which means that the first dose can be obtained without problems. The second, later, because it is a booster shot.
“Scanpix” / ITAR-TASS nuotr./Russian nuo coronavirus vaccine “Sputnik V”
So the president did not joke about announcing the start of mass vaccination: we have enough first doses. “It is very possible to give the first vaccine to 2 million people before the end of the year,” said the source.
But he also acknowledged that there were problems with the second component of Sputnik V. Manufacturers are now doing their best to provide the necessary equipment and increase vaccine production capacity, which is very poor.
It is true that another Russian government source, Medusa, said that such barriers are natural, because there has never been an attempt to mass-produce a completely new biological agent: a new vaccine. The problem is reportedly expected to be fixed by the end of the year.
No information or vaccinations
Another obstacle to this race is the fact that public services must verify the effectiveness of the vaccine. Such a process will have to be carried out even if manufacturers have already found a way to mass-produce Sputnik V doses, as the vaccine will not be available to the general public until then.
Since the beginning of the year, the state has approved about 200,000. Sputnik V dosage. It is true that the Russian Food and Drug Administration has only approved stocks of vaccines produced by Generium and the Gamalay Research Institute.
I promised to send another 500 doses in November, but we got nothing. We know the conditions under which to store the vaccine, we have the equipment, but there is no vaccine.
A company representative, Meduza, said another 500,000 people could reach the public this month. doses of vaccine, but cautioned that it is too early to talk about millions of doses. The required capacity will be available only in January.
There is not much information at all. Although Moscow is already preparing for a mass vaccination campaign (even if it is a booster vaccine), other regions of Russia cannot launch it because they do not have data or doses of the first vaccine.
“Reuters” / “Scanpix” nuotr./Russian vaccine nuo coronavirus “Sputnik V”
“We have only heard what is said in public. Only Moscow received something, it gave us nothing, an official from one of the northern regions complained.” We will not know anything until Monday, when we were promised that we would finally say something. ” .
The same official made it clear that the federal government simply wants to appear against the world as a leader in the fight against the pandemic, but has assigned only 40 test doses of Sputnik V to its region.
“We promised to send another 500 doses in November, but we did not receive anything. We know the conditions under which to store the vaccine, we have the equipment, but there is no vaccine,” Meduza said.
Powerful second wave
Russia boasts that Sputnik V is “the world’s first registered vaccine against COVID-19” and authorities granted permission to distribute it in early August.
The move was criticized by international experts, who noted that the vaccine had only been tested on a few dozen people at that time.
Putin does not express such doubts, declaring in August that one of his daughters became one of the first volunteers to be injected with the drug.
„Scanpix“ / ITAR-TASS nuotr./Vladimiras Putinas
In recent months, Sputnik V has been offered to healthcare professionals and teachers, although the final phase of vaccine testing has not yet been completed.
Several high-ranking officials said they had been vaccinated, and earlier this week the Russian military began vaccinating warships for warships preparing to set sail on missions.
On Wednesday, the UK became the first Western country to allow the use of a coronavirus vaccine developed by the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German company BioNTech.
Russia began struggling with a second serious outbreak this fall, with the number of new cases exceeding levels recorded at the start of the pandemic. Still, authorities have so far refused to issue the same strict universal quarantine as in the spring.
On Saturday, a new record number of COVID-19 cases per day was set in Russia: 28,782. 7,993 of these cases were cleared up in Moscow. The operational headquarters that coordinates the fight against the epidemic registered a total of 42,684 deaths from coronavirus in the country.
Russia, where 2.4 million were approved as of Saturday. cases, it currently ranks fourth in the world after the United States, India and Brazil.
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