Corona Daily 359: Putin Wins the Vaccine Race

On 11 August, Russia launched Sputnik V, the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine. Vladimir Putin declared the vaccine, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, was safe, works quite effectively, forms strong immunity, and has passed all the needed checks. More importantly, his daughter had taken two shots, and except for a slight increase in temperature for a day, she felt well and had a high number of antibodies. Alexander Gintsburg, the director of the Gamaleya Institute, when asked, said he had no idea how Putin’s daughter managed to get vaccinated. She was probably one of the volunteers, he said.

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Fontanka.ru, an electronic newspaper from St Petersburg, is one of the few surviving media outlets in Russia publishing fact-based reports. It offers the history of the five attempts by Gamaleya Institute to produce vaccines.

That history begins in 2009, with a company called Rosnano investing heavily to create an influenza vaccine AdeVac-Fleu. Gamaleya institute was the co-executor and curator of the scientific program. Rosnano’s plan was to capture the global influenza vaccine market and earn $3 billion per annum. Clinical studies have been ongoing since 2015, and expected to last till the end of 2020. NT-Pharma, a little known company, was a partner. The project seems to have ended in January 2020, when a Moscow court convicted the NT-Pharma directors of embezzling a billion rubles from Rosnano. The vaccine is not available, but a billion rubles have disappeared and partners gone to jail.

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In mid-2010 Gamaleya scientists tried to create another flu vaccine. Clinical studies were carried out in the military hospital Burdenko for two years. This brought the Ministry of Defence close to Gamaleya. That ministry can easily bypass many international rules. Coincidentally, the GamFluVac research is also scheduled to end in December 2020. Russia’s Health Ministry hasn’t registered the vaccine.  

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After the failure of the flu vaccines, Gamaleya scientists had focused on Ebola, an epidemic raging in Africa. Back in January 2016, Vladimir Putin announced Russia was the first country to develop an Ebola vaccine. Health minister Veronica Skvortsova presented in Geneva two developments by Gamaleya – GamEvac and GamEvac-combo. Russia was surprised when WHO asked for clinical trial data and documents. (Surely, it is Russia’s intellectual property). Clinical trials still continue. In one of those trials, 2000 volunteers from Guinea were injected. Academician Gintsburg was awarded the Order of Merit by the Republic of Guinea. Notwithstanding, the vaccine has not been recognized or approved anywhere.

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Gamaleya has also worked on a vaccine for the MERS epidemic that had started in Saudi Arabia and spread to 27 countries. In May 2020, Alexander Gintsburg said the vaccine MERS-GamVac was successfully created by Gamaleya eighteen months ago. (Though MERS was long gone). WHO clarified that no specific drug or vaccine exists against MERS anywhere.

Gintsburg, along with others, published a nine-page paper detailing the success of MERS-GamVac on mice and monkeys. No human tests were done. The Russian Health Ministry issued a permit to conduct clinical trials in Sept 2019. They were to be tested on 276 volunteers by the end of 2020.

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In April 2020, the health ministry asked Gamaleya to produce a Covid-19 vaccine. In May, Gintsburg announced it was ready. His deputy Denis Logunov confirmed Gam-Covid-Vac (aka Sputnik V) was a copy-paste of the MERS-GamVac. In his meeting with Putin, Gintsburg asked for 1.5 billion Rubles for bottling the vaccine. The vaccine has so far been tested on 76 volunteers, including Putin’s daughter.

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At least until 2036, in every major epidemic, Vladimir Putin will always make sure Russia will bring out the first vaccine and save the world.

Ravi