President Vladimir Putin has heralded Russia’s vaccine offering as “reliable as a Kalashnikov assault rifle”, says an article on BBC.
Sputnik light
The comment was made during a video conference on Thursday with Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova. It came as the country’s health officials registered a single-dose version of the Sputnik V vaccine on Thursday, dubbed Sputnik Light.
Mr. Putin’s comparison referenced the Soviet Union-era weapon that remains popular and widely used still today.
Sputnik V
He was quoting a comment originally made by an Austrian doctor earlier this year about the jab’s efficacy. The Sputnik V vaccine works in a similar way to others developed by Oxford/AstraZeneca and Janssen/Johnson & Johnson. It uses a cold-type virus, engineered to be harmless, as a carrier to deliver a small fragment of the coronavirus to the body.
Critics of the Putin administration were skeptical when the vaccine was given speedy regulatory approval in Moscow last year, but late-stage trials have found it offers high levels of protection against Covid-19.
