Lack of Transparency in Russian Vaccine Development Sparks a Third Protest Letter

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 31 – A group of those who served as volunteer test subjects for the Russian EpiVakCorona vaccine have dispatched an open letter to the company that developed it and to Vladimir Putin demanding that the company release a report containing the details of the test (epivakorona.com/openletter3.html).

            This is the third such letter the test subjects have sent. Neither of the first two was successful, but the authors say they hope for better luck this time because they have evidence that the reports they want exists and because they are not asking that use of the vaccine be stopped but only that information be released (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/07/31/my-khotim-spasti-liudei-ot-vaktsiny-esli-ona-neeffektivna).

            The authors point out that the company that conducted the tests was not qualified and was selected by the pharmaceutical company without competitive bids. And they say that they are taking this step because they do not want anyone to suffer negative consequences from getting the shots.

            Today, Russian officials reported registering 25,766 new cases of infection and 726 new deaths over the last 24 hours. Both figures were up as a result of dramatic increases in the city of Moscow and the appearance of hotspots in a variety of places around the country (t.me/COVID2019_official/3252 and https://regnum.ru/news/society/3330437.html).

            The Vektor Center says that most of the infections are from the delta variant, adding that there appears to be little change that a lambda variant will displace it anytime soon (regnum.ru/news/3334046.html). Russian specialists also are now devoting more attention to the post-infection syndrome (rosbalt.ru/moscow/2021/07/31/1913912.html).

            Russian media are focusing on a major success story in Sakhalin, where officials have dramatically boosted the share of the population which has been vaccinated over the last 30 days and now claim that the region is only two months away from reaching herd immunity (eastrussia.ru/material/sakhalin-dva-mesyatsa-do-kollektivnogo-immuniteta-k-covid-19/).

            But a Russian media firestorm broke out after former Georgian president Mikhail Saakvashvili suggested that Russian tourists had artificially introduced the coronavirus during elections in his country last year to disrupt the process (regnum.ru/news/3334108.html).