Brussels sees the Russian Sputnik V vaccine as a political tool in the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The president of the European Commission, Úrsula Von der Leyen, took advantage of an appearance on Wednesday afternoon to sow doubts about Sputnik V: “We still wonder – said the German – why Russia is theoretically offering millions and millions of doses while it is not making sufficient progress in vaccinating its own population. I think it is a question that deserves an answer “.
Von der Leyen’s phrase can imply two things: that Russia is promising millions of doses that it is not actually capable of producing at a sufficient speed. Or worse, that Russia is providing other countries with a vaccine that it is reluctant to use on its own citizens.
Moscow has not yet requested authorization to the European Medicines Agency – responsible for giving the go-ahead to any medicine that enters the European market – to sell its vaccine in Europe, but the Hungarian Government used a complicated argument – extreme urgency – to buy and start administering the Russian vaccine.
The Slovenian government would also be in negotiations. Von der Leyen recalled that Russian producers “have to send all their data to the European Medicines Agency and then go through the scrutiny process to know the safety and efficacy of their product, like any other vaccine.”
A doll of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Reuters photo
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In addition, the president of the executive arm of the European Union recalled that, as neither Russia nor China manufacture their vaccines in Europe, the authorization process it’s longer and more complicated. European experts would have to regularly inspect and visit the plants and laboratories that produce this vaccine if it were to finally be sold in Europe. Russia has already begun to grant the license for its vaccine to be manufactured in other countries, to start in drug production plants in Brazil, China, South Korea, India and Iran. Most of that production is being done in India without its national regulators having yet approved the Russian vaccine.
Europeans think they won’t need the Russian vaccine. After the authorizations of Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, Brussels now expects that in three or a maximum of four weeks the European Medicines Agency will approve the use of the vaccine from the Belgian laboratory Janssen, which will be produced by the American multinational Johnson & Johnson . This vaccine should change the situation in Europe because it has obvious advantages, such as that it can be kept for months in a simple freezer or that it only needs one dose.
No covid passport
The acceleration of the rate of vaccinations in Europe remains the number one priority of the European Executive, which for now rules out the launch of a ‘covid passport’, as requested by the governments of the south of the bloc to reactivate tourism in the next boreal summer.
The last European summit refused to immediately start working on that idea, which had been put on the table by the Greek government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and had defended by the president of the European Commission. The French government said no. The German said no. Others were added, such as the Belgian and the Dutch.
The governments of southern Europe have spent months looking for a way to reactivate their tourism sectors, first with the ‘safe corridors’ (when it was believed that a region without much incidence would continue like this throughout the pandemic) and then with the ‘coronavirus passports’ that would receive people already vaccinated to allow them to travel.
Those from the north see those ‘coronavirus passports’ skeptically and as a potential form of discrimination between those already vaccinated and those who have not yet been vaccinated. And even those who, for medical reasons such as allergies, can never be.
The European Executive would see the creation of an approved vaccination certificate, but it would not give any extraordinary rights and it would never be a kind of safe conduct to travel without restrictions such as prior tests or quarantines.
Brussels also clings to the opinion of the European Agency for Disease Prevention and Control, which earlier this week said it was against using vaccination certificates as safe-conduct to travel or to avoid having to comply with the measures of public health in force. The Agency’s explanation is that “right now we have no proof that a vaccinated person cannot be infected and transmit the disease”. Without having to suffer it or have symptoms.
PB
