Sputnik V

Jun 25, 2021 Editorial

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Kaieteur News – lmost 70 years ago, on October 4, 1957, the then Soviet Union, a decade into the Cold War, did the unprecedented and launched a small, shiny ball into space. For three months, that small, shiny ball would circle the earth, emitting radio signals before eventually disintegrating. That small, shiny ball was called Sputnik 1, ‘sputnik’ being the Russian word for satellite

What followed was the frenzied competition between the USSR and its arch-rival, the USA, to be the first to dominate the undiscovered territory of space. A brief 12 years after the launch of Sputnik 1, the Americans would land the spacecraft Apollo 11 on the surface of the Moon, with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin onboard. The benefits of Sputnik 1 being launched into space have been incalculable, with space age technology providing innovation that has benefited virtually every sector from technology to medicine.

Recently, the name “Sputnik” has had a resurgence, with the launch of Sputnik V, not a rocket, but a vaccine, one designed by the state-owned Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology based in Moscow, Russia. With the vaccine registered in early August of last year, just months after COVID-19 was confirmed globally as a pandemic, the Gamaleya Institute beat out major American and European companies as well other state-supported efforts like those in India and China. The initial response was however controversial. An article published in the magazine Science on August 11, 2020 (the same day of the registration) noted the pushback against the vaccine:

“Scientists around the world immediately denounced the certification as premature and inappropriate, as the Gamaleya vaccine has yet to complete a trial that convincingly shows it is safe and effective in a large group of people.”

By February of this year, however, the scientific skepticism around the speed at which the vaccine was produced dissipated after the results of a trial study was published in the venerable medical journal, The Lancet, showing the vaccine was not only safe but had a high, 92 percent efficacy rate. According to the conclusion of the study:

“The development of the Sputnik V vaccine has been criticised for unseemly haste, corner cutting, and an absence of transparency. But the outcome reported here is clear and the scientific principle of vaccination is demonstrated, which means another vaccine can now join the fight to reduce the incidence of COVID-19.”

When the government of Guyana subsequently decided to use Sputnik V as the majority vaccine for its COVID-19 immunisation campaign, it was on the basis of not only the reality of the availability of the vaccine versus the scarcity of others, but also with the backing of sound clinical information. The fact that the World Health Organisation (WHO) had not yet approved the vaccine was incidental at best to Guyana and the over 70 countries now listed as using Sputnik V. As early as December of 2020 in fact, Hungary had signed a contract with Human Vaccine – the subsidiary created by the Russian state agency responsible for selling the vaccine, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) – for the provision of 1,000,3000 treatments of the Sputnik V vaccine.

Today, the WHO and the European Union’s European Medicines Agency (EMA) are on the verge of officially approving Sputnik V. According to Dr. Peter Figueroa, a professor at the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, and a member of the WHO working group on vaccines, the expectation is that the vaccine is going to get approval and an emergency listing. And according to a Reuters article published two days ago, the only concern expressed in a preliminary WHO report was that there seemed to be a mechanical issue with how vials are filled at one of the four Sputnik V filling plants. Says the article:

“The issues did not relate to the safety or efficacy of the vaccine itself, Pharmstandard-UfaVITA said in a statement. The plant is responsible only for pouring into vials doses of Sputnik V vaccine produced elsewhere.”

Much has been made by the political opposition here about the cost of the vaccines and the method of procurement through a middle man, even as other WHO-approved vaccines have been snapped up by rich countries. With WHO and EMA approval, Sputnik V will enter massive new markets that Guyana will be unable to compete with at all, as the real price – not a listing on some artificial index – will shoot up exponentially. Guyana has been strategic enough to have made a low-risk gamble upon a safe vaccine at a time when it was most readily available. That investment in Sputnik V is likely already paying incalculable dividends when it comes to the health and safety of the people of this country and our collectively ability to emerge and thrive in the wake of the pandemic.

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