Russia lagging behind in vaccination drive

MOSCOW: While at the Park House shopping mall in northern Moscow, Vladimir Makarov saw it was offering the coronavirus vaccine to customers, so he asked how long it would take.

“It turned out it’s simple here – 10 minutes,” he said.

But Makarov, like many Muscovites, still decided to put off getting the Sputnik V shot.

Russia boasted last year of being first in the world to authorise a coronavirus vaccine, but it now finds itself lagging in getting its population immunised.

That has cast doubt on whether authorities will reach their ambitious goal of vaccinating more than 30 million of country’s 146 million people by mid-June and nearly 69 million by August.

The vaccine reluctance comes as shots are readily available in the capital to anyone 18 or older at more than 200 state and private clinics, shopping malls, food courts, hospitals – even a theatre.

Through April 27, only 12.1 million people have gotten at least one shot and only 7.7 million, or 5%, have been fully vaccinated.

That puts it far behind the United States, where 43% have gotten at least one shot, and the European Union with nearly 27%.

Data analyst Alexander Dragan, who tracks vaccinations across Russia, said last week the country was giving shots to 200,000-205,000 people a day. In order to hit the midJune target, it needs to be nearly double that.

“We need to start vaccinating 370,000 people a day, like, beginning tomorrow,” Dragan said.

One factor in Russians’ reluctance over Sputnik V was the fact that it was rolled out even as largescale testing to ensure its safety and efficacy was still ongoing.

But a study published in February in the British medical journal The Lancet said the vaccine appeared safe and highly effective against Covid-19, according to a trial involving about 20,000 people in Russia. Dragan says one possible explanation for the reluctance is the narrative from authorities that they have tamed the outbreak, even if that assessment might be premature.

Vasily Vlassov, a public health expert at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, echoed Dragan’s sentiment and also pointed to inconsistent signals from officials and media.

“Russians in 2020 were bombarded with contradictory messages – first about (the coronavirus) not being dangerous and being just a cold, then that it was a deadly infection,” he said.

“Then they were banned from leaving their homes.”