Vaccination begins in Belarus as Russia mulls using Western vaccines

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS - In Brief 29 Dec 2020 by Alex Teddy
On December 29 Belarus commenced providing V to the population. It is the first non-Russian country to do so. There have been 190 000 cases of coronavirus and 1 400 deaths. The low death toll has met with much scepticism. Minsk will vaccinate doctors, nurses and teachers before others. Belarus never had a lockdown or any official restrictions on behaviour around coronavirus.Meanwhile it was reported on December 28 that Hadassah Clinic aims to introduce Western vaccines to Russia. The Hadassah Clinic wants to import Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.The clinic is part of the Skolkovo network which has some legal exemptions. This allows it to skip the complex bureaucracy required to introduce medicines. The clinic is allowed to use drugs that are registered in OECD nations but not in Russia. On that basis the clinic would be permitted to use foreign vaccines immediately. However, world demand for these vaccines is extremely high. As no Russian clinic has even ordered these vaccines if the vaccines were ordered tomorrow no doses would arrive in Russia for weeks.The clinic is seeking approval to run clinical trials of these vaccines in Russia. The Health Ministry needs to allow research on these vaccines in Russia first only then it might approve Hadassah taking part in the trials. With luck trials will commence in February 2021. But is there any point? Ideally coronavirus will be defeated in spring 2021.

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