As the Sputnik V vaccine sputters, can Moscow live up to its production contracts?

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through the challenging months ahead. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. 

⇒ Issue #192 (In numerology, 192 represents creative self-expressio.)

⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 05/28: 169,008,339*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 05/28: 3,512,587*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 05/28: 1,378,993*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 05/28: 25,393*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 05/28: 22,347,313*

May 28, 2021—Welcome to a new Friday CurveFlattener, readers. Editorial Director Allan Ryan is on the case today from deep in the heart of Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula. 

Sputnik V—the first Covid-19 vaccine available to humans—appears to be sputtering off the launch pad. Promises to produce hundreds of millions of doses at plants in Russia and worldwide have largely evaporated. Production problems have interfered with Russia’s ability to supply other countries like Mexico with additional first and second Sputnik V doses. (The second dose is different from the first dose, using a different adenovirus). In addition, the Covid-19 vaccination rate in Russia itself is low, perhaps a sign of distrust in the government-developed vaccine. 

Other observers are convinced that Sputnik V really is a political weapon. In this article, a European Union diplomat is quoted as saying, “Russia’s low vaccination rate just doesn’t tally with it having a supposedly cheap, easy-to-make and effective vaccine . . . either Moscow’s being altruistic, which seems unlikely. Or it’s prioritizing geopolitics over Russians’ needs.”

According to this report, only 12.1 million people in Russia have received at least one vaccine injection, and only 7.7 million had been fully vaccinated by April 27. Russian authorities had previously claimed that 30 million of the country’s 146 million people would be vaccinated by mid-June and nearly 69 million by August. Analysts say this would require at least a doubling of the current vaccination rate. 

In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin (above) said that Russia had signed agreements to produce 700 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine in other countries, including India. 

However, this CTV report discloses that Russia has produced just 33 million Sputnik V vaccines as of May 12 and exported fewer than 15 million (according to a Reuters report that counted each vaccine as a first and second dose).

The vaccine production issues could now be considered a warning to foreign partners who had planned to mass-produce the vaccine, and those countries contracted with Moscow to receive doses. 

Mexico, for example, has received only 1.9 million of the 24 million Sputnik V doses it had contracted for.

Russia is reportedly trying to distance itself from the issue by developing a single-shot vaccine called ‘Sputnik Light.’ There are also reports that Russia is working with AstraZeneca to assess the efficacy of a mix-and-match vaccine.

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Bob McLay. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma

COVID CHRONICLE 05/28/2021

• Questions about the characteristics of coronavirus variants are being explored by U.K. researchers. They study three subtypes, known as B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2 and B.1.617.3, to determine how quickly they can spread, their potential to evade immunity and whether or not the variants may cause more severe disease. The researchers say more thoroughly understanding these variants will help epidemiologists model the effects on healthcare personnel, services, and vaccine efforts. 
  
• Vaccine ‘mixing and matching’ under study in Canada: This new national study will assess the safety and effectiveness of using two different Covid-19 vaccines for the first and second dose. According to the University of British Columbia’s Dr. Manish Sadarangani, co-chair of the study, the effects of increasing the interval between doses will also be investigated. The total cohort of patients is expected to be about 1,300. “There are currently four COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in Canada, three of which are being distributed by public health programs,” said Dr. Sadarangani, an associate professor in UBC’s department of pediatrics and director at the Vaccine Evaluation Center at BC Children’s Hospital in this UBC release. “As other vaccines become available, they will be added to the study to address public health knowledge gaps. Study data will be communicated regularly to public health officials to help inform decision making for the ongoing vaccine rollout in Canada.”
  
• New research now shows that people with pre-existing conditions are more likely to be adversely affected by the social isolation and quarantine brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. In studies presented at the recent virtual 23rd European Society of Endocrinology, researchers in the Adjara Region of Georgia evaluated these effects in people with diabetes, discovering that blood pressure levels increased in 88.2% of these diabetic patients, with 50% of these cases resulting in hospitalization.
  A study involving 12 Italian centres in Italy confirmed that 478 patients with hypocortisolism—363 with adrenal insufficiency and 115 with congenital adrenal hyperplasia who were adequately treated with glucocorticoids—showed higher anxiety and depression when compared to healthy controls.

TODAY CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON 

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WHAT’S ON THE MENU TONIGHT

Asparagus. It’s a favourite veggie in this household, especially when the stalks are fresh out of the field. Here’s a recipe I’m going to attempt tonight. Seems simple enough that even I might be able to pull it off.

HERE’S TO NEXT WEEK

On Thursday, publisher Mitch Shannon will be back at the keyboard. On Monday, watch for the Skin Spectrum Weekly e-newsletter, and on Tuesday, the NPC Healthbiz Weekly will be distributed. Go ahead and subscribe through the links above, at no charge.