According to the officials of the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labor, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia, Georgia will not procure Russian vaccine Sputnik V. No further explanations regarding the decision were provided by the Ministry for today.
Russia has started its Covid-19 vaccination programme with its own Sputnik V vaccine two days ago, with clinics in the capital Moscow inoculating those most at risk from the virus.
On December 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking during a televised government meeting, said Russia should begin a widespread vaccination effort, adding that the primary focus should be the "vaccination of the two risk groups: of doctors and teachers."
Developers say the vaccine is 95% effective and causes no major side effects, but it is still undergoing mass testing.
No public statement is founded whether the President Putin himself, or other Russian officials will use their domestically produced vaccine.
According to Statista.com, in total, over 50 countries worldwide placed orders for Sputnik V from Russia as of November 2020. Furthermore, the vaccine was available for vaccination in Belarus, India, Venezuela, and the United Arab Emirates as part of clinical studies. In October 2020, Russia applied for prequalification of Sputnik V at the WHO to speed up its availability worldwide. Other countries that would produce the vaccine, such as Brazil, China, India, or the Republic of Korea, would also sell it abroad. Among several countries surveyed in November 2020, the highest level of awareness about Sputnik V was recorded in Mexico.
In his interview with cbc.ca, Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that whether a country chooses to buy the Russian-made vaccine comes down to a question of whether they have confidence in the science behind it and trust the regulators who approved it.
The Russian vaccine gets treated more skeptically, said Evans, because the processes in the United States and Europe are far more open and transparent than they are in Russia.
"We do not know how carefully their trials are monitored and how carefully they are reported. We do not know that," he said.
"But the countries that are buying it are buying it on trust that the Russians have produced something."
Some 200 Covid-19 vaccines are in development around the world, according to the World Health Organization, each one promising to protect people from the deadly coronavirus.
Now, nearly a dozen are starting or nearing the final stage of testing. The U.K. on Wednesday became the first Western country to approve a vaccine for emergency use and is preparing to begin distributing a limited number of shots within days. The U.S. and the European Union are expected to approve one or more vaccines in December.
A vaccine candidate by Moderna Inc. and one developed jointly by Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE, have shown very positive preliminary trial results. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was granted emergency-use authorization in the U.K. on Dec. 2 and is being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S., where a similar authorization could come later December. The Moderna vaccine is also on track for potential U.S. regulatory clearance by the end of 2020. Both vaccines use a novel gene-based technology to provoke an immune response.
The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC also have an experimental shot in final-stage testing.
According to the optimistic forecast, Georgia will receive the coronavirus vaccine in spring 2021, the Deputy Minister of Health Tamar Gabunia told Georgian First Channel.
Gabunia noted that Georgia has already made a prepayment to purchase the vaccine from the Global Vaccine Alliance.
“Covax, which pioneered the development of the coronavirus vaccine, is an organization founded by the Global Vaccine Alliance. Also, we have the authority to choose the vaccine. In other words, we will be able to discuss the effectiveness of vaccines offered by different manufacturers and make a final decision taking into account the quality factors and the results,” stated Gabunia.
