Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine against Covid-19, has already become subject to coordinated information attacks from nations that have political differences with Moscow.
That’s according to the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund that bankrolled the research. Kirill Dmitriev claims that, whether inspired by commercial concerns or just malice, the politicized approach of a number of Western countries ultimately jeopardizes the health and safety of their own citizens.
In the development and trials of the vaccine, Russia used a proven platform that had been tested on thousands of people over the past six years, the chief of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) stressed, during an online conference on Tuesday.
“Coordinated and carefully prepared information attacks on the Russian vaccine are trying to discredit and hide the correctness of the Russian approach to drug development,” Dmitriev said. “A politicized approach to the Russian vaccine on the part of a number of Western countries endangers the lives of their citizens.”
“Meanwhile, a number of countries are trying to prove, in the case of 30,000 to 40,000 patients, the safety of fundamentally new approaches towards creation of vaccines, which, in fact, need to be tested for several years,” Dmitriev explained on Tuesday. “The fact is that none of these vaccines created with the use of new solutions has been registered anywhere in the world.”
“They have not studied the long-term effects on the human body, including fertility,” he added. “Thinking that such approaches are safe in the long term without carefully studying them, in particular their long-term consequences, is a dangerous illusion.”
Eyebrows have been raised at the speed of the Russian development process, particularly in the West, where nations such as the US and Britain are working on their own solutions. Of course, this also means these countries have commercial and political reasons for wanting to be the first to produce a solution to the Covid-19 crisis, which has also devastated the global economy.
However, Vadim Tarasov, a top scientist at Moscow’s Sechenov University, where the trials took place, said the country had a head start as it has spent the past 20 years developing skills in this field and trying to understand how viruses transmit.
On August 11, the Russian Health Ministry registered the first Covid-19 vaccine in the world. The formula was developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology and the RDIF. President Vladimir Putin said his own daughter had already been immunized and that she had experienced no serious side effects.
