Free vaccination against Covid-19 with the Russian-made “Sputnik V” vaccine, originally invited by health, education and social workers, began in Moscow on Saturday.
About seventy vaccination points have been set up in the city’s polyclinics. Vaccination is open to people between the ages of 18 and 60 who are not chronically ill and have not been ill in the last two weeks, with the exception of expectant mothers and breastfeeding women.
The whole process takes less than an hour, including completing the questionnaire, seeing a doctor, preparing the vaccine, and observing for 30 minutes after vaccination.
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the middle of this week, about two million doses of Sputnik V will be produced in the near future and mass vaccination will be able to start in the country, while Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova has said that vaccination will start in all regions of Russia by the end of next week.
Russia announced the registration of the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine in August, earning criticism from international experts, as only a very small number of people had tried it at the time.
In recent months, although clinical trials have not been completed, vaccinations have been offered to doctors and teachers, and several senior officials have announced that they have received them, and vaccination of Russian Navy crews began this week before going on missions.
Meanwhile, Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Medical Alliance for Medical Workers, described the current vaccination campaign as a “ridiculous political campaign” for Echo Moscow, stating that it is not yet clear how effective and safe the vaccine is. According to her, the research was conducted with an insufficient number of volunteers, but a lot of inaccuracies can be found in the scientific articles dedicated to this issue.
In Moscow, an average of a quarter of the total number of newly detected infections in Russia is registered every day. On Saturday, another 7,993 people were confirmed in the capital last day, and 28,782 people across the country. This is the highest number of cases detected in a single day since the beginning of a pandemic.
The total number of people infected with the new coronavirus in Russia has exceeded 2.4 million, ranking fourth in the world after the United States, India and Brazil, while the virus-related disease in Covid-19 has claimed a total of 42,684 lives.
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