After becoming the first coronavirus vaccine registered in the world, Sputnik V faced backlash in the western media, which implied that the medicine lacked scale in…
The healthcare community is facing a paradox. On the one hand, the World Health Organisation calls out inequality in the distribution of the coronavirus vaccines, stressing that the lowest income country in the world got only 25 shots as opposed to 39 million sent to 49 countries with higher levels of income. On the other, the WHO itself authorised only one COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer/ BioNTech, ignoring a multitude of others developed in China, Russia, the UK and India, thus limiting the possibility of success for its own COVAX initiative – a global vaccine accelerator and a bank for the even distribution of the produced drugs. The global health body said Pfizer’s vaccine passed emergency validation due to its „safety, efficacy and quality“. The WHO was not the only one to be quick to recognise this specific vaccine – the EU, specifically President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen pressured for the speediest approval of the jab on the territory of the bloc. According to a report by the Le Monde, citing obtained documents, the political pressure to approve the vaccine was so high that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had to look the other way regarding some of the issues found with the medicine. Namely, the EMA reportedly had to ignore the alleged inconsistency between the contents of the vials sold by Pfizer to the compounds used in the vaccine trials. Constantly emerging reports of possible side effects also seemingly could not wane the tempo of Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine’s spread around the world. At least 13 Israelis experienced temporary mild facial paralysis soon after getting their first jab out of the two Pfizer inoculations, putting in question the possibility of getting the second one.
