Moscow Times Reporter Dmitry Gladyshev describes how he was recently offered a vaccine dose that expired in April this year during a visit to the Gum department store in central Moscow.
When he asked questions about it, he saw documentation signed by the Ministry of Health in Moscow where the life of the vaccine has been extended from six to nine months in the case of frozen vaccines and from two to six months in the case of liquid vaccines.
Epidemiologists with whom the newspaper spoke say that the expired vaccines can not cause any harm but are hardly effective in protecting against covid-19.
“Sputnik is a vector vaccine and has a much shorter lifespan than other types of vaccine,” epidemiologist Timur Pesterev told the newspaper.
Another researcher, Vasily Vlasovtold says that because Sputnik is a new drug, it is possible that the dates printed on the doses are not very safe because too little research has been done about the vaccine.
The number of new infections in Russia is since a peak in mid-February, when about 190,000 people were confirmed infected every day, now down to about 3,500, according to figures presented by the statistics site Worldometer.
The number of deaths per day has also fallen sharply.
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