Slovakia’s experiment with the Russian “Sputnik” vaccine ended in failure

Demand for the Russian vaccine in Slovakia is so weak that the government is now forced to find where to help the vast majority of the 200,000 purchased. Sputnik V.

This Russian vaccine is no longer available to Slovaks since last Thursday, and its doses will expire at the end of July.

The government is planning or donating the remaining 160,000. The most realistic candidates for Sputnik V doses are Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, and possibly Argentina.

The statistics are relentless: As of June 23, only 8,000 people had been vaccinated with both doses of the Russian vaccine. Slovak population. Another 14,000 people have signed up to receive the vaccine.

A blow to the image of the world

Slovakia’s decision to ditch the Sputnik V vaccine is another blow to global reputation.

There was good news in the spring, for example, from South America, but these vaccines have not yet been approved by the European Medicines Agency. The prime minister of Italy, a country quite friendly to Russia, Mario Draghi, was even more outspoken, recently telling reporters that Sputnik V might not get the green light in Europe.

And I. Matovičius almost exploded with joy in March. He wrote on Facebook that the Russian vaccine would fundamentally change the situation in Slovakia, citing polls showing that nearly half a million Slovaks would only be vaccinated with Sputnik V.

In total, the prime minister decided to buy up to 2 million. doses of Russian vaccine, without even consulting the ruling coalition partners or any other service.

Two coalition partners immediately vehemently opposed I. Matovičius’s idea and, in the event of chaos, he was ousted from the post of prime minister.

Although Matovičius now holds the post of Finance Minister, whose previous owner Eduard Heger replaced him in the Prime Minister’s Office, the initiative has cost the former head of government a lot of popularity. Matovic is now Slovakia’s least trusted official.

By the way, Slovakia did not receive a full order, only 200 thousand. dose. And the largest vaccination program in the entire country has also suffered: only about 40% have received at least one vaccine. population.

Health Minister Vladimir Lengvarsky said recently that he expects this number of fully vaccinated people by the end of the summer. This means that a new wave of the epidemic could emerge, as a highly contagious strain of the Delta coronavirus is already traveling through Europe.

The controllers resisted

As elsewhere, in Slovakia there are many people who doubt the benefits of vaccination. But the passivity is reinforced by the refusal of some politicians, including I. Matovičius, to get vaccinated.

The former prime minister explains that he waits until 12-year-olds can get vaccinated and then get vaccinated with his daughter. I. Matovičius also joked that nobody trusts him anyway: “People say that nobody believes in Matovičius, so who will I give an example to?”

However, in response, V.Lengvarsky declared on television that both I.Matovičius and the leaders of other parties should be vaccinated “just like other people”.

Sputnik V’s reputation in Slovakia was also damaged by the fact that the country’s Institute for Drug Control (SUKL) refused to approve the vaccine. Already in April, the director of the institute Irena Storova pointed out that the quality of the vaccines imported to Slovakia is inferior to the products whose effectiveness has been described in medical scientific journals.

I Satova’s stubbornness was not to the liking of I. Matovičius, who publicly questioned the competence of the country’s scientific institutions and decided to sidestep the contradictions of the SUKL: the green light for the use of “Sputnik V” in Slovakia was illuminated by a laboratory in Hungary.

Even now, when it is clear that the Slovaks were not interested in Sputnik V, Matovičius decided to reprimand “a lot of stupid people who would be happy if sputniko they expire and the vaccine cannot be used. “

“Without this vaccine, we will not achieve herd immunity and people will die unnecessarily,” said the former Slovak prime minister.