Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine probably sabotaged any further aspirations for the Sputnik coronavirus vaccine, the first injection approved by any country.
Manufacturing of the vaccine has slowed, further research is stalled and a much-anticipated March 7 visit by the World Health Organization to Russia’s Sputnik manufacturing plants, the last step in its long-awaited international approval process, was once again delayed — this time indefinitely.
While Russia’s efforts are focused on Ukraine, other vaccine makers are moving forward. They are filling a void that — only a month before the war — two Russian entities hoped to fill: the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which developed the vaccine; and its partner, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).
It is an inauspicious fall for a vaccine whose arrival stunned the world.
On Aug. 11, 2020, only six months into the pandemic, Russia became the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine.
Russia hoped its vaccine would be used worldwide to help stop the pandemic, that the shot would bring geopolitical and economic gains and restore its glory as a superpower, lost with the fall of the Soviet Union. The country named its vaccine Sputnik V after the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, developed in 1957, which beat out the United States in the space race.
Sputnik V has been approved in 71 countries with more than 4 billion people, and its newest jab, Sputnik Light, has gained recognition in 30 nations, according to data provided by Sputnik.
But nearly two years later, Gamaleya and RDIF have sold
fewer than 300 million doses, and less than 2.5 percent of the people vaccinated worldwide have taken a Sputnik shot, according to data from the World Trade Organization.
By contrast, China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines — with lower reported efficacy — have accounted for more than 5.3 billion doses, the WTO data shows.
“Russia’s vaccine diplomacy has failed,” Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director and trustee for the Economist Intelligence Unit, said. “Gamaleya was looking toward a big PR push to save the vaccine. I understand they believe in it from a scientific perspective, but obviously, the current situation goes beyond science.”
Just as Gamaleya and RDIF were trying to rehabilitate their vaccine in February with new research promoting it as a universal booster, Russia invaded its western neighbor. Four days later, the United States sanctioned RDIF, and in March, the European Union followed suit.
When the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control placed RDIF and its chief executive , Kirill Dmitriev, on the list of sanctioned Russian entities and people, it labeled RDIF a “slush fund” of Putin and “emblematic of Russia’s wider kleptocracy.”
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