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The United States announced last week that it would soon open its doors to foreign travelers vaccinated against the coronavirus, easing restrictions on large swathes of global visitors for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
But the new rules, which are expected to take effect in November, also appear to exclude many people who consider themselves fully immune – including millions who have received two doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians could be directly affected. Despite icy diplomatic ties and limited demand for international travel, around 300,000 Russians visited the United States in 2019, the latest year for which figures are available, according to the US Travel Association.
More broadly, the US plan is another blow to the makers of Sputnik V, which Moscow proudly proclaimed as the first coronavirus vaccine to be registered for use. Although the vaccine was intended to be a powerful tool for pandemic diplomacy, its limited acceptance abroad and slow deliveries left it behind not only Western vaccines but also those made by Chinese manufacturers.
“This is a big problem for Russian travelers and for people in other countries who have received Sputnik V,” Judyth Twigg, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who follows public health in Russia, said of the new US rules in an email.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund that backed Sputnik V, said in a statement that not only has the vaccine “been approved in 70 countries where more than 4 billion people live, more than half of the worldwide population, but its efficacy and safety have been confirmed both in clinical trials and during real world use in a number of countries.
“We oppose attempts to politicize the global fight against COVID-19 and to discriminate against effective vaccines for short-term political or economic gains,” the statement continued.
The new US plan requires that most non-citizens seeking entry into the United States be vaccinated with vaccines approved for emergency use by the United States Food and Drug Administration or the World Health Organization. This includes vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, as well as vaccines developed by Chinese companies such as Sinopharm and Sinovac.
But Sputnik V, an adenovirus vaccine developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Epidemiology and Microbiology Research Institute, has yet to be approved by the WHO. The World Health Agency said this week it was suspending its vaccine review process, citing concerns about manufacturing practices at production plants in Russia and whether the vaccine could be produced consistently according to necessary standards.
Speaking at a conference in Vladivostok this month, RDIF director Kirill Dmitriev said that “mutual recognition of vaccines is the issue this year” and asserted that “a number of companies “Big Pharma” intentionally try, for reasons of competitive rivalry, to restrict Sputnik and absorb the markets “, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
Unlike other countries, the United States did not have general restrictions on travel from Russia prior to this announcement, meaning all travelers from the country who tested negative for the coronavirus could be allowed to enter the United States according to the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That will change in November, just as the doors will open to millions of travelers from Europe and beyond.
The new US rules will not only affect the Russians. According to data from the Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University, some 448 million doses of Sputnik V have been purchased worldwide, many of which are destined for low-income countries. Some governments have complained about slow deliveries from Russia. Limited travel options are likely to aggravate Russian drug criticism.
“Russia wasted an opportunity to use this vaccine as a diplomatic tool,” Twigg said, citing production problems around Sputnik.
The Russian Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the new US policy.
Sputnik V isn’t the only vaccine at risk of being left behind. Neither the FDA nor the WHO have cleared Indian Covaxin, which has seen 560 million doses purchased so far, mostly in India. People vaccinated with Covaxin may not be allowed to travel to the United States in November. There have also been disputes with individual governments not accepting certain vaccines, such as Britain’s refusal to fully recognize vaccines given in many parts of the world.
But for Sputnik V, a vaccine that has taken a brash and at times confrontational approach with rivals, the failure to get the WHO emergency use list or a similar list from the European Medicines Agency, an EU body, was a blow to reputation.
Despite the recent suspension of the WHO approval process, RDIF stated that “the Russian Ministry of Health is in constant contact with WHO experts on the approval process and we remain confident that the Approval of Sputnik V by the global health regulator is imminent due to the vaccine’s exceptional track record. “
Some vaccination experts are more widely concerned that the United States will move, and others like them could create two classes of people vaccinated in the world: one able to travel freely and the other not.
In Russia and other countries, travel agencies have already started offering high net worth clients trips abroad, including to places like Serbia, so that they can get vaccinated with vaccines more widely. accepted.
Alexander Gabuev, senior researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said there was growing frustration among “those with the money and the power” that their vaccines were not more widely accepted. Some have been spreading “conspiracy theories,” Gabuev said, including one that “everyone envies Russia as the nation that developed the first vaccine” and therefore the Western powers conspired against Sputnik V.
The WHO approval for Chinese vaccines, such as Sinopharm and Sinovac, has undermined that message. Although Sputnik V appears to offer stronger protection than these Chinese-backed vaccines, Russia’s role as a vaccine exporter has been severely limited by production issues and China has become a more reliable partner, a declared Gabuev.
“The approval of the World Health Organization adds to the credibility of Chinese vaccines compared to Russian vaccines,” he added.
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