“Sputnik V” in the “other” column: how Russia overcame mistrust of the vaccine, but failed to cope with supplies

Russia's attempts to promote "soft power" in the world through "vaccine diplomacy" are hampered by the shortage of "Sputnik V", write BBC and Bloomberg . Russia has been able to overcome distrust in the effectiveness of its vaccine, but is unable to cope with mass production, and the irritation of buyers from the constant disruption of supplies is constantly growing.

The BBC gives a breakdown of Russian vaccine shortfalls by country:

• Iran received 2 million doses of the 5 million doses ordered in February of the first phase of vaccinations. From other countries, including China, Iran received 5 million doses of vaccines during this time. Local production of the Russian vaccine is being organized. Iran ordered the most from Russia - 60 million doses - and therefore suffers from shortages more than other countries, the agency notes.

• about the state of deliveries to Argentina We wrote in detail here . The country, one of the first to approve Sputnik, was short of 5.5 million first doses and 13.1 million second doses as of early July. This week it announced the purchase of 20 million doses of Pfizer, a major political defeat for Sputnik-backed President Alberto Fernandez ahead of the fall elections. The footage of Fernandez being vaccinated was one of the brightest early successes of Russian “vaccine diplomacy.”

• Guatemala , which ordered 16 million doses in April (and paid almost $80 million), received only 150,000 by the end of June and asked for a refund. After that, two batches of 200 thousand doses were sent to the country . This week, the country's president announced that he was refusing half of the Russian order in favor of supplies from other countries, while Russia could keep the advance. RDIF explained that it was about the correction of the contract, taking into account the new schedule and the supply of the Sputnik-Light vaccine.

• Honduras , which ordered 4.2 million doses, has received a tiny fraction so far. “The supplier let us down,” the agency quoted the unnamed minister as saying.

• Brazil , where the morbidity situation is one of the most difficult in the world, is ready to refuse a batch of 10 million doses ordered in Russia. True, in this case, the reason is not in the delay in deliveries, but in problems with the approval of the local regulator.

• At the end of 2020 , Bolivia made a pre-order for 5.2 million doses of Sputnik with delivery by the end of May. “By June 30, only 745,000 doses had been received. In the twentieth of July, another 525,000 were delivered, then it was reported that the arrival of a new batch of 200,000 doses was delayed, ”writes the BBC. This week, the lack of second doses even caused unrest in La Paz.

• Mexico received 4.1 million of the ordered 21 million doses of Sputnik. Here, the Russian vaccine is bypassed by competitors: according to local media, the country has already received 21 million doses of Pfizer, 16 million doses of AstraZeneca and 9 million doses of Sinovac.

• The picture is even worse on another continent: Ghana received 20 thousand doses out of the requested 3.4 million, Angola - 40 thousand out of 12 million.

What's happening

RDIF, which oversees the export of the vaccine, does not abandon early plans to vaccinate 700 million people outside of Russia by the end of the year, writes Bloomberg. “RDIF partners plan to produce enough doses of Sputnik V this year to vaccinate 700 million people,” the fund and the BBC confirmed. The fund expects to launch production at bio-enterprises of foreign partners, including large factories of the Serum Institute of India, and start mass deliveries in September.

According to the London analytical company Airfinity, a total of 99 million doses of Sputnik have been delivered so far, more than half of them to the domestic market. This is very small compared to the supply of vaccines by Sinovac (1.2 billion doses), Pfizer (950 million), Sinopharm (875 million) and Moderna (240 million). “The developers built their export plans on a wildly inflated estimate of domestic capacity,” Samuel Ramani, a specialist in Russian international relations at Oxford University, told the agency. “Russia has lost its lead at the start as alternatives have become more accessible, and now it is more likely to pass under the “other participants” column.”

The worst situation is with the second dose, which is more difficult to produce. have just been made public ). It is with this that the BBC links numerous studies of vaccine "cocktails" from the first dose of Sputnik with other vaccines in recipient countries (in Russia, too , the first results of joint trials with AstraZeneca

And in some places they decided not to wait for Sputnik, the BBC notes: “In April, permission to use the Russian vaccine was issued by the authorities of Panama. But already a month and a half later, the government announced that it would not sign agreements on the import of the vaccine, since the Russian side could not guarantee a delivery date.”

Inside Russia, Sputnik V continues to be touted as a quality and cheap alternative to Western vaccines, even as US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is visiting Tajikistan with 1.5 million doses of Moderna , the agency notes. “Sputnik V is a domestic propaganda victory,” says epidemiologist Vasily Vlasov from the National Research University Higher School of Economics. “Both the authorities and the media talk about successful approval in many countries, omitting inconvenient details.” This week, RDIF said that all manufacturers have delays in the supply of vaccines, and the Russian vaccine is effective, in demand and, unlike competitors, does not have side effects.