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The mayor of Moscow has announced that medical staff, teachers and social workers can start registering for a Covid-19 vaccination in the city from Friday.
The first jabs will be administered on weekends, and as the Sputnik V vaccine is delivered, the mayor has promised to expand the list of eligible people.
The gradual deployment, ordered on Wednesday by President Vladimir Putin, will begin even though Sputnik V is still being tested for its safety and effectiveness.
With 28,145 new coronavirus cases detected in Moscow on Thursday and 554 deaths, the need for an effective vaccine is urgent, especially as the Kremlin continues to rule out an unpopular national lockdown.
The desire to ‘beat the world’ is also clear here: Russia was the first to register a Covid vaccine for use in August, even before Phase III trials on Sputnik had started.
The developers of the vaccine now claim that it protects up to 95% of people, but this is based only on provisional data. The reported side effects appear to be comparable to other Covid jabs: Several people interviewed by the BBC reported mild cold symptoms, or nothing at all.
Despite Russia’s haste to start using Sputnik – and to announce it – mass production of the vaccine is still limited. The government has said it will only manufacture two million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year and will not increase production until 2021.
Some 40,000 volunteers are taking part in Phase III trials of the vaccine, but in addition, Russia says several thousand workers in high-risk jobs – including doctors – have already been vaccinated.
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