Russian scientists have dismissed criticism regarding their vaccine as sour grapes.
MOSCOW — It was with great fanfare that President Vladimir Putin and other officials announced this month that 1 billion doses of a Russian vaccine for the new coronavirus would soon be rolled out, supposedly putting an end to the worst pandemic in a century.
“If we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people or giving them something that doesn’t work, we could start doing this, you know, next week if we wanted to,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the United States’ leading infectious disease expert.
Currently, eight vaccines are further along than Russia’s in late-stage trials, including ones produced by Moderna in the U.S., by Oxford University and AstraZeneca in Britain, and several in China. The Ministry of Health said the first doses would go to Russian medical workers and teachers, and Putin said one of his daughters had already taken the vaccine.The chair of the ethics committee in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Alexander Chuchalin, quit as the ministry was in the process of approving the vaccine. Reached by telephone, Chuchalin declined to comment.
Story continues“Doctors are not stupid,” she said in an interview. “They understand what an untested medicine can do.”
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