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DISINFO: EU in no hurry to admit Sputnik V because it is afraid of competition for European vaccines

DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS

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coronavirus vaccination Sputnik V

DISINFO: EU in no hurry to admit Sputnik V because it is afraid of competition for European vaccines

SUMMARY

The EU is in no hurry to sign off on the jab. This, is because they fear its strong attributes, thanks to which it may end up outcompeting the products that the European bureaucracy is promoting at home.

RESPONSE

Disinformation narrative about an ongoing campaign of the West with regard to disregard/discredit the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

The claim that the West is afraid of competition from Sputnik V is not supported by factual evidence. The cautious approach to Sputnik V from European countries was motivated by science, not fears of competition. Many countries had widespread concerns that the approval was premature, since, at the time, the vaccine had not even started phase III trials, nor had any results on the earlier stage trials been published.

The WHO also expressed concerns about the preternatural registration of the vaccine. After the results of the phase I and II trials were published in The Lancet in September 2020, a group of international experts analysed them and expressed concerns about statistical anomalies.

The European Medicine Agency started a rolling review of Sputnik V on March 4, 2021, following an application from R-Pharm Germany GmbH. The head of the EU's medicines regulator, Emer Cooke, on Tuesday 23 March 2021 said she hoped the Sputnik V vaccine would receive approval, and that the agency would visit Russia to find out more about production [as part of the rolling review]:

"We do hope that this will be a valuable vaccine to add to the vaccines that were available to the European population."

This was reported by diverse press outlets like Deutsche Welle, and can also be viewed on the website of the European Parliament (time code 11:12:10 to 11:13:11).

See other examples in our database, such as claims that the West is campaigning to discredit the Sputnik V vaccine and is preparing large scale smear actions including fake footage of mass patient deaths, that the West criticises the vaccine because it can’t accept Russia’s primacy, or that the WHO and Microsoft sabotaged Sputnik V.

Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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