Russia admits to misinterpreting WHO requests for Sputnik V vaccine certification

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov explained to the press that they have not yet provided the necessary information (to the WHO for the certification of the anticovid vaccine) because they had a different vision of the data that had to be transmitted and how it had to be provided.

“We have different rules,” he explained, specifying that Russia he was “progressively adapting to these demands” and that the Russian authorities had nothing to reproach themselves for.

Announced with great pomp by President Vladimir Putin in mid-2020 and deployed months later, Sputnik V is used by several dozen countries and its reliability has been validated by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.

However, so far it has not been approved by either the WHO or the European Union medical authorities due to Russia’s inability to provide the necessary documents to demonstrate that it is safe and effective.

Russia is also struggling to convince its own people to turn to Sputnik V, in a context of great mistrust of the authorities.

“The other vaccine manufacturers have come to understand what the WHO is asking of them for certification. And only + ours + do not understand it, “the Fund for the Fight Against Corruption (FBK) of the main jailed Russian opponent Alexéi Navalni ironized on Tuesday on Twitter.

“And the result is that our own citizens do not trust this vaccine, because the WHO cannot homologate it,” lamented the FBK.

In Russia, no foreign vaccine against covid-19 has been registered.

According to the baseline count on the Gogov website, 42.2% of the Russian population is vaccinated against this disease.

To date, Russia has officially registered more than 10 million cases of coronavirus, of which 291,749 resulted in death.

According to the national statistical agency Rosstat, which has a broader definition of deaths related to the virus, the death toll exceeded 520,000 at the end of October.