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Russian leader Vladimir Putin will not take the country’s new coronavirus vaccine, the Kremlin said on Tuesday – even though health officials said the vaccine was over 90% effective and was already being given to some people.
“We have not yet started generalized vaccination and the head of state cannot participate in the vaccination as a volunteer,” a Kremlin spokesman told Bloomberg. “It’s impossible. The president can’t use an uncertified vaccine.”
And this despite the fact that just hours after Pfizer announced promising results from its advanced COVID-19 vaccine trial – which showed inoculation to be over 90% effective – Russia proclaimed the the same goes for its Sputnik V vaccine, without providing any study.
Health officials have since said the shot was found to be 91.4% effective at preventing coronavirus infections in initial testing, although final results have not yet been released, according to Bloomberg.
Previous data, however, has shown the vaccine to be over 95% effective in volunteers who were injected, the Guardian reported.
The results come from a 42-day trial of 19,000 volunteers who received two doses of Sputnik and 21 volunteers who received just one, the outlet said.
But while Putin has yet to try his country’s vaccine, other top Russian officials including Kirill Dmitriev, head of the country’s Direct Investment Fund, were among those who volunteered to be trapped – and reported feeling good.
“This is undoubtedly positive news not only for Russia, but for the whole world, for all countries,” Dmitriev told the Guardian.
Russia’s Sputnik V is just one of many contenders in the global race to develop a vaccine against COVID-19, which has so far infected more than 59 million people worldwide and killed 1.4 million , according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
There are more than 2 million cases in Russia.
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