The global effort to find a vaccine against the Coronavirus has been likened to the space race between Russia and the West in the 70’s. Which is why according to Russia, the United States and the rest of the west have found it difficult to accept Russia’s coronavirus vaccine.
An evidence of this fact is seen in Russia’s christening of its vaccine as ‘Sputnik V’, alluding to the space race age when Russian Astronauts where shot into space in the Sputnik IV space shuttle.
Apparently the announcement of a coronavirus vaccine developed by Russia’s Gamaleya research institute with help from the Russian Defence Ministry attracted widespread condemnation from Western European countries and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
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It apparently also sparked off an information war as Western powers accused the Russians of skipping large scale tests for the vaccine. They also alleged that it was unsafe and expressed that Russian researchers cut corners due to the speed of production.
On the part of the Russians, they admit that more tests are still being carried out but the human trials, including one of the daughters of President, Vladimir Putin have been successful and safe to use.
The President of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, a major backer of the Sputnik V vaccine accused the US of waging a major information warfare against the vaccine in an interview on CNBC.
According to Dmitriev;
“It really divided the world into those countries that think it’s great news … and some of the U.S. media and some U.S. people who actually wage major information warfare on the Russian vaccine.”
“We were not expecting anything else, we are not trying to convince the U.S. Our point to the world is that we have this technology, it can be available in your country in November/December if that works with your regulator … [while] people who are very skeptical will not have this vaccine and we wish them good luck in developing theirs.”
The top Official also said Russia was not ready to share it’s vaccine data with the rest of the world even though the WHO has expressed it’s intention to review the Coronavirus vaccine candidate approved by Russian regulators.
“We agree that nothing in detail has been published yet, we are just sending some information to some of our partners today on the results of the first phases of the clinical trials and it will all be published in August.” Dmitriev concluded.
According to the WHO, 165 potential Coronavirus vaccines are being tested globally. 139 are still in the pre-clinical trial stage while 26 have progressed to the human testing stage.