Snags arise in Russia’s vaccine diplomacy
MOSCOW — Russia’s boast in August that it was the first countr y to authorize a coronavirus vaccine led to skepticism at the time because of its insufficient testing. Six months later, as demand for the Sputnik V vaccine grows, experts are raising questions again — this time, over whether Moscow can keep up with all the orders from the countries that want it.
Slovakia got 200,000 doses on March 1, even though the European Medicines Agency, the European Union’s pharmaceutical regulator, only began reviewing its use on Thursday in an expedited process.
The president of the hard-hit Czech Republic said he wrote directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin to get a supply. Millions of doses are expected by countries in Latin America, Africa, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East in a wave of Russian vaccine diplomacy.
“Sputnik V continues to confidently conquer Europe,” anchor Olga Skabeyeva declared on the Russia-1 state TV channel.
State TV channels have covered vaccine expor ts extensively, citing praise from abroad for Russia and running segments about the difficulties countries are having with Western vaccines.
The early criticism of Sputnik V has been blunted by a report in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet that said largescale testing showed it to be safe, with an ef ficacy rate of 91% against the virus.
Some experts say boosting the use of vaccines from China and Russia — which have not been as popular as those from the West — could offer a quicker way to increase the global supply. Others note that Russia wants to score geopolitical points.
Whether Russia can deliver is another question. China has supplied millions of doses to other countries, but the output of Sputnik V appears for now to be far lower than the demand.
“They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in terms of this vaccine actually being a viable, marketable product,” said Judy
Twigg, a political science professor specializing in global health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “They’ve made all of these explicit and implicit promises to people inside and outside Russia about access to this product that now is unexpectedly great. And now they’re stuck trying, scrambling, trying to figure out how to deliver on all those promises.”
Russia also must take care of its own. Authorities have announced plans to vaccinate 60% of adults, or roughly 68 million people, by the end of June.
The domestic rollout in Russia has been slow, compared with other nations, with about 4 million people, or less than 3% of the population, vaccinated as of late Februar y. Some of that could also be due to widespread reluctance among Russians to trust vaccines.