The creators of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V claimed this Thursday a “strong protection” against the omicron variant of covid-19, joining similar statements by President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian sovereign wealth fund claimed that its vaccine has “a neutralizing effect on viral activity twice as high” as that of its competitor Pfizer.
In addition, they cited a study by the Italian laboratory Spallanzani in association with researchers from the Gamaleya Center, inventor of Sputnik V.
Sputnik is not WHO approved
The Russian vaccine has not yet been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), a process that has been blocked for several months due to disagreements with Moscow regarding the information to be provided.
Putin recently said that the Russian vaccine was “more effective than the others used in the world” against the highly contagious omicron variant.
In Latin America, Argentina at the end of 2020 is the first country to homologate Sputnik V, a vaccine already approved by 69 nations.
This has also been applied in Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela and Bolivia, among other states in the region.
Covid case record
The statements of the creators of Sputnik It takes place at a time when the city of Moscow registered this Thursday a record of new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours, with 11,557 infections.
Russia, the country in Europe with the most deaths from covid-19, registered 324,060 deaths from the disease since the start of the pandemic, according to figures from the authorities.
But a count by the national statistics agency Rosstat reported more than 600,000 deaths from the pandemic at the end of November.
The Russian government is having trouble convincing citizens to get vaccinated, despite having Sputnik V at their disposal.
Less than half of the population is fully vaccinated today.