The Russian President has said he will get vaccinated against Covid-19 on Tuesday, amid a push by the authorities to encourage Russians to get the shot.
Vladimir Putin did not specify which vaccine he would take. The main vaccine publicly available in Russia is the Sputnik V, which it is promoting for export. Moscow has also given emergency approval to two other domestic vaccines, EpiVacCorona and CoviVac.
“Vaccination, of course, is a voluntary decision for every person. It is every person’s personal decision,” Putin said during a televised government meeting on Monday about Russian vaccines against Covid-19. “By the way, I plan to do this tomorrow.”
Putin said it was vital to ramp up production of vaccines for domestic use in Russia, where 4.3 million people have so far received both doses of a two-shot vaccine.
He said Russia had signed international deals to supply doses of Sputnik V to 700 million people.
“Today we can say confidently – and practice indisputably confirms – that Russian vaccines are absolutely reliable and safe,” he said. “No other similar foreign drugs have shown such a high level of protection.”
Scientists said last month Sputnik V had almost 92% efficacy in fighting Covid-19, based on peer-reviewed late-stage trial results published in the Lancet medical journal.
According to the Russian statistics agency, Rosstat, more than 200,000 Russians had died of Covid-19 by the end of January, the world’s third highest death toll behind the US and Brazil. A separate tally, updated daily by the government’s coronavirus taskforce, uses a much lower figure.
(The Guardian)
