#Gamaleya Research Institute

[marketnewupdate]

Sputnik V Director Found Strangled in Moscow Office

The scientific community was left reeling this week after Alexander Ginzburg, the director of the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow, was found strangled in his office on Monday. Ginzburg was the driving force behind Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, which has been approved for use in over 70 countries.

Authorities are investigating the death, which many believe may have been a targeted attack. The loss of Ginzburg is a significant blow to Russia’s efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, as the Sputnik V vaccine has been a key component of the country’s vaccination drive.

The incident has also raised concerns about the safety of scientists and researchers involved in developing COVID-19 vaccines. Many have faced threats and intimidation from anti-vaccine activists and conspiracy theorists, underscoring the importance of protecting the independence and integrity of scientific research.

Ginzburg’s contributions to the fight against COVID-19 will not be forgotten. His tragic death serves as a stark reminder of the risks and challenges faced by those working on the frontlines of scientific research. The scientific community and the world at large are mourning the loss of a brilliant mind and a pioneering scientist.

Source: https://www.marketupdates.info/2023/03/04/director-of-gamaleya-institute-behind-sputnik-v-covid-vaccine-found-strangled-in-his-office/

[carlocarrasco]

COVID-19 Crisis: Philippines vaccine expert panel members call Sputnik Light a good booster shot against COVID-19

COVID-19 Crisis: Philippines vaccine expert panel members call Sputnik Light a good booster shot against COVID-19

I said it before and I will say it again – the Philippines should acquire a lot more supplies of Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines to be used in nationwide vaccination for COVID-19 especially as the Omicron variant has been present locally (reportedly over a thousand cases nationwide) and already there were people who died because of it. There are already studies confirming that Sputnik…

[gujarati9-blog]

राष्ट्रपति पुतिन की बेटी को वैक्सीन देने के बाद शरीर का तापमान गिरा, काफी संख्या में एंटीबॉडीज बनीं; वैक्सीन की पहली आधिकारिक तस्वीर सामने आई Hindi NewsHappylifeRussia Coronavirus Vaccine Sputnik V Update | President Vladimir Putin Daughter Body Temperature Drops After Vaccinated…

[khabrisala]

Putin says Russia has developed ‘first’ coronavirus vaccine, daughter inoculated Image Source : PTI Russian President Vladimir Putin/FILE Russia President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said the country has developed the "first" coronavirus vaccine.

[viggorosneswriter]

Russia suggests Trump injected Sputnik V vaccine

[vanessawheelerblog]

Russia suggests Trump injected Sputnik V vaccine

[edwardristfavorite]

Russia suggests Trump injected Sputnik V vaccine

[carlocarrasco]

COVID-19 Crisis: Slight rise in Metro Manila’s COVID-19 positivity rate was due to holiday frenzy according to OCTA Research

COVID-19 Crisis: Slight rise in Metro Manila’s COVID-19 positivity rate was due to holiday frenzy according to OCTA Research

As far as Metro Manila goes, the slight increase of the COVID-19 positivity rate was caused not by the media-magnified Omicron variant but by the holiday frenzy according to OCTA Research in an article published by the Philippine News Agency (PNA). To put things in perspective, posted below is the excerpt from the PNA report. Some parts in boldface… The slight increase in Metro Manila’s…

[todaynewsadda]

Russia Looking For Partnership With India For Producing COVID-19 Vaccine: Official We are planning to produce the vaccine in more than five countries: Kirill Dmitriev New Delhi: …

[newsoutbursts]

Russia Looking For Partnership With India For Producing COVID-19 Vaccine: Official We are planning to produce the vaccine in more than five countries: Kirill Dmitriev New Delhi: …

[newsboy360]

Russia Looking For Partnership With India For Producing COVID-19 Vaccine: Official We are planning to produce the vaccine in more than five countries: Kirill Dmitriev New Delhi: …

[go-21newstv]

Russia Looking For Partnership With India For Producing COVID-19 Vaccine: Official We are planning to produce the vaccine in more than five countries: Kirill Dmitriev New Delhi: …

[kalimullah27777]

Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Says Russia Looking For Partnership With India For Producing COVID-19 Vaccine Sputnik V We are planning to produce the vaccine in more than five countries: Kirill Dmitriev New Delhi: …

[inventivaindia]

Good News: World's First Covid-19 Vaccine will be Registered by Russia on 12 August!

Good News: World’s First Covid-19 Vaccine will be Registered by Russia on 12 August!

Amid a sudden surge in COVID-19 cases and mortality rates across the world, Russian viral caseload is an estimated 8,77,135 people. It has the world’s fourth-largest caseload, after the US and Brazil and India – the only four countries so far to record more than a million coronavirus cases. In the COVID-19 vaccine race, Russia is all set to become the firstcountry in the world to register a fully…

[brostateexam]

To expand a little bit on this, there are four vaccines currently in distribution in the US and Western Europe right now: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Astrazeneca.

Pfizer: Is the distributor of the vaccine (meaning they produce it to scale and are responsible for some degree of vaccine logistics and distribution), which was developed by BioNTech, a private company based in Germany.

Moderna: Is the creator and distributor of their vaccine. They are a private company.

Johnson & Johnson: The creator of the vaccine is Janssen Vaccines, which is a subsidiary of Janssen Pharmaceuticals, which is in turn a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, so J&J is both the creator and the distributor of their vaccine.

Astrazeneca: Here’s where things get shitty. Astrazeneca is the distributor of the vaccine, which was created by Oxford University. The results of the Oxford research was supposed to be open to all distributors to aid in global distribution of the vaccine, because if there is unequal access to vaccines, it gives the disease more time to spread and develop mutations. Instead, after significant pressure from the Gates Foundation to not do this over concerns that people would make inneffective or unsafe vaccines (and who gave them $750M for this project, so this was patron pressure), Oxford sold the rights of the research to Astrazeneca as the sole distributor.

So 3/4 of these vaccines were developed by private companies anyhow, and the fourth was developed by a university-foundation partnership, then pressured to keep the results privatized by the foundation. I would love to live in a world where we have the public infrastructure to develop, produce, and distribute a vaccine. Unfortunately, we do not live in that world, and short of nationalizing a bunch of pharmaceutical and logistics companies, that would not be possible. Personally, I would have been thrilled if someone nationalized their shit and centralized vaccine distribution in response to this pandemic, but most of the governments where the vaccines are coming from are way too far to the right to ever do something like that.

Anyway, that’s just the US and Western Europe. In a surprising development, other countries also have the capability to develop their own vaccines because they are not sitting around with their thumbs up their asses trying to figure out how to develop running water. Let’s have a look at some of the vaccines from the rest of the world:

Sputnik V: Russia’s vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidiomology and Microbiology (a publicly-funded Russian foundation). I was not able to find who is distributing the vaccine, so it may also be Gamaleya, or another publicly funded agency within Russia.

Sinopharm: One of two Chinese vaccines, developed by Sinopharm, a government-backed public-private company in China. Sinopharm is both the creator of the vaccine and the distributor. It is receiving significant scrutiny, as it seems that it may not be as effective as first reported, but this is muddled by a bunch of factors.

CoronaVac: The other of the two Chinese vaccines, developed and distributed by Chinese-based Sinovac, a private biotech company based in China.

Covaxin: The Indian Covid vaccine, developed by Bharat Biotech International Limited with cooperation from the Indian Council of Medical Research, so a private-public partnership.

Russia’s vaccine, in particular, is being widely sold and distributed, but all of these (including the US and Western Europe based vaccines) have some degree of global distribution (with the possible exception of Covaxin, as they have a distribution crunch just for domestic demand). Lastly, Cuba is in phase 3 trials of two different vaccines, and Vietnam is in phase 1 for its vaccine, and probably many other countries are developing their own versions, too. Fortunately, despite the legitimate evil of the Gates Foundation threatening Oxford until they recanted on making their vaccine results publicly available, other countries are stepping up, and there are other options.

All this is to say:

Every country should fund biotechnology for public research and distribution for things like vaccines as pharma companies are not, generally speaking, motivated to produce them.

For countries that didn’t do this that are already in the middle of a panini, it is too late to bring an institution online that would have had any hope of getting finished as fast as the existing private equivalents.

“Big Pharma” sucks for many reasons but they aren’t the villains in this particular case.

Do not trust foundations created by billionaire tech assholes.

Go read about Cuban medical education, training, and research if you don’t already know about it; it’s amazing.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Is Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine safe? Brazil’s veto of Sputnik V sparks lawsuit threat and confusion

A confusing and unusually nasty fight broke out this week over the safety of a Russian COVID-19 vaccine known as Sputnik V after a Brazilian health agency declined on Monday to authorize its import because of quality and safety concerns. The stakes escalated yesterday when the Twitter account officially associated with the vaccine said “Sputnik V is undertaking a legal defamation proceeding” against Brazil’s regulators.

In an online press conference several hours later, the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) defended its decision, maintaining that documentation from some of the Russian facilities making Sputnik V shows that one of its two doses contains adenoviruses capable of replication, a potential danger to vaccine recipients. The vaccine uses two different adenoviruses, which cause the common cold, to deliver the gene for the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVD-19. Both are supposed to be stripped of a key gene that allows them to replicate.

The Monday announcement left many scientists and media outlets believing Anvisa had directly tested Sputnik V for replicating adenoviruses, which would be unusual for a regulatory agency. But Anvisa has since clarified—it had not and was relying on information provided by the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, the Moscow-based developer of the vaccine.

“The data we evaluated shows the presence of replicating virus,” Gustavo Mendes, general manager of medicines and biological products at Anvisa, said at the press conference. Anvisa would not accept the vaccine, he said, without further studies to indicate it is safe.

Gamaleya said in a statement on its website that Anvisa’s allegations “have no scientific grounds and cannot be treated seriously.” The research institute added that “no replication-competent adenoviruses (RCA) were ever found in any of the Sputnik V vaccine batches” and said a four-stage purification process prevents contamination.

The furor comes as Brazil, which has one of the highest burdens of COVID-19 in the world, is desperately trying to expand its vaccination campaign. The country has vaccinated just 14% of its people with a first dose and governors from some states hoped to bolster that effort by grouping together to buy 30 million doses of Sputnik V.

The spat has bewildered and divided outsider observers, in Brazil and elsewhere. Some scientists have used social media to decry the apparent contamination and some have denounced the aggressive response by Sputnik V’s backers, who were already under fire for releasing little data on the vaccine’s safety record. On Wednesday, an agency of the European Union also issued a report criticizing Russia’s promotional effort for Sputnik V for providing disinformation.

Other scientists, however, have questioned whether Anvisa appropriately interpreted the information provided by Sputnik V’s makers, and whether the media has too readily accepted the agency’s claim that the vaccine is contaminated. The stakes are high because Sputnik V has been authorized for use in more than 60 countries, although neither the World Health Organization nor the European Medicines Agency has yet authorized it. “We need this vaccine. It’s cheap. It’s effective. It’s easy to store and transport,” says Hildegund Ertl, an adenovirus vaccine scientist at the Wistar Institute. “If the press could just take a deep breath before they rush to conclusions it would really help us all.”

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