While the richest countries in the world are grappling with shortages of Covid-19 vaccines, some of the poorest worry about getting vaccines at all. Yet a solution to both problems may be hiding in plain sight: vaccines from China and Russia, and soon, perhaps, India.
Chinese and Russian vaccines were initially dismissed in Western and other global media, partly because of a perception that they were inferior to the vaccines produced by Moderna, Pfizer-BioNtech or AstraZeneca. And that perception seemed to stem partly from the fact that China and Russia are authoritarian states.
But evidence has been accumulating for a while that the vaccines from those countries work well, too. The leading medical journal The Lancet published this week interim results from late-stage trials showing that Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine, had an efficacy rate of 91.6 percent. Those confirmed findings released in mid-December by the vaccine’s developers, the Gamaleya Center and the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Serbia, Morocco, Hungary and
— source nytimes.com | Achal Prabhala, Chee Yoke Ling | Feb. 5, 2021