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Moscú (AFP) – 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 great” as that of its competitor Pfizer, citing a study by the Italian laboratory Spallanzani in association with researchers from the Gamaleya Center, inventor of Sputnik V.
The Russian vaccine has not yet been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), a process that has been blocked for several months as a result of 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 was at the end of 2020 the first country to homologate Sputnik V, a vaccine already approved by 69 nations that is also applied in Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela and Bolivia, among other states in the region.
The statements by the creators of Sputnik take place at a time when the city of Moscow registered this Thursday a record number 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 the population is fully vaccinated today.
© 2022 AFP
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