They claim that Russia stole AstraZeneca vaccine formula to develop Sputnik V against COVID-19

British intelligence agents believe Russian spies stole the vaccine formula against coronavirus from Oxford/AstraZeneca and they used it to develop the drug Sputnik V, the first to be applied in the world to treat the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to The Sun, UK security services have told ministers that they now have strong evidence that a foreign agent stole vital information from the pharmaceutical company. Oxford/AstraZeneca, including the shot of the vaccine.

Consulted on the subject, the Minister of the Interior, Damian Hinds, declined Monday to confirm the reports, but admitted that cyberattacks were becoming more sophisticated.

“There are foreign states that constantly want to get their hands on sensitive information, including trade and scientific secrets and intellectual property.”, Held.

“I am not going to comment on the specific case you mention because it would not be correct to do so in detail, but it would be fair to say, correct to say, that we face threats of this type that are different, they are more sophisticated, they are more extensive than ever. The face of espionage, the face of espionage, is very different from when you and I were growing up and we need to constantly improve our capabilities. These are very serious matters. “added.

However, The Sun’s reveal does not refer to a hack, but to the physical theft of the vaccine formula.

Last year, the now-late Security Minister James Brokenshire said that Britain was “more than 95 percent certain” that Russian state-sponsored hackers had targeted the UK, the US and Canada in attacks on pharmaceutical companies.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded at the time: “The British say they are almost certain, or 95 percent sure, in what they say. Why not 96 percent? Or 94 percent? It seems that their security services have very peculiar calculation methods ”.

Conservative MP Bob Seely, an expert on Russian affairs, told The Sun that Britain needed to “take Russian and Chinese espionage seriously.”

“Whether it’s stealing AstraZeneca’s design or blackmailing us with energy by these authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, we have to be crafty with them.” added.

It is necessary to specify that Sputnik V uses a non-replicative viral vector technology, the same as the AstraZeneca formula: a latent virus (without the gene responsible for its reproduction) to carry the immune agent. Other technologies are messenger RNA, inactivated virus or protein subunits.

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