Where is Sputnik, Zin? Russia faces vaccine shortage amid record wave of COVID-19 deaths

Vaccine deficiency

Vaccines are regularly supplied to Moscow and St. Petersburg, but the regions regularly experience shortages, despite promises from officials to rectify the situation. So, already in the first months of mass vaccination, Minister Manturov planned to send 20 million doses of drugs to the regions, but in fact, such a volume of vaccines was produced only by April.

As a result, by the beginning of July, by data “Kommersant”, there was a shortage of vaccines in the Krasnodar and Khabarovsk Territories, in the Rostov Bryansk, Tambov and Kemerovo Regions, on Sakhalin and in Altai. At the same time in the Tambov region on the waiting list for the vaccine it turned out more than 30 thousand people. There were no drugs even for those who are required to be vaccinated on the basis of the list of the chief sanitary doctor. In the Vladimir region, the vaccination queue has grown to 70 thousand people. As a result, there came delivery of only 9.4 thousand vaccines, instead of the required 100 thousand. Approximately the same volumes of supplies were in the Volgograd region, where only 17.7 thousand doses were delivered in July. In the Oryol region, in mid-July, doctors had only 2.5 thousand vaccines in stock.

When asked by The Insider about how the authorities are going to resolve the vaccine crisis, the Ministry of Industry and Trade responded that the situation is under control:

“As for the provision of vaccines in certain regions, the Ministry of Health, together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, are in round-the-clock contact with local administrations and are working on routing the supply of new batches of vaccines in order to cover the demand on a priority basis where there is an abrupt increase in demand“ at the moment ”.

Deliveries of Sputnik V doses ordered by other countries are also disrupted: Mexico, Argentina, Honduras, Guatemala, Iran and other countries counting on the Russian vaccine, get only a small part of what was promised. Argentina, which did not wait for the Russian drug, ordered millions of doses of Pfizer, the other day received 400 thousand doses from Russia.

What do officials promise

The head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov and Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova talk about plans to increase the production of vaccines every month. Basically we are talking about the mass production of “Sputnik V” and “Sputnik Light”. The production of the remaining two vaccines – “EpiVacCorona” from Novosibirsk “Vector” and “CoViVac” from the Chumakov center – is still ten times inferior to the scale of supplies of “Sputnik”.

But the Sputnik V vaccine is also produced in smaller quantities than officials say. So, in mid-January, Manturov promised to produce by April 33 million doses of Sputnik V vaccines: “We should produce at least 7 million doses in January, 11 million in February, and 15 million doses are planned for March.”

However, by this date, the Gamaleya center had released only 20 million doses, and into civilian circulation received and even less – only 16 million doses, that is, less than half of the promised, said the deputy head of the center Denis Logunov.

Manturov made new optimistic forecasts at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June, promising that from July they would produce 30 million doses of Sputnik V every month.