(Moscow) Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Sunday evening that he had received a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, as Russia faces a serious epidemic wave against the backdrop of a sluggish vaccination.
“I did it two hours ago,” Putin said, in television footage broadcast on Russian state broadcaster Rossia 24 shortly before 4.30 p.m. GMT.
The injection was “painless”, he assured during a meeting with Denis Logounov, a senior official of the Gamaleïa-institution center at the origin of the Sputnik V vaccine, the first to have been approved by Russia in 2020.
According to the Kremlin master, who was vaccinated with the two doses of Sputnik V in March and April, this time he received a dose of Sputnik Light, a single dose vaccine.
Since the beginning of the autumn, Russia has not stopped breaking its records for daily infections and deaths due to COVID-19. An outbreak facilitated by the low vaccination rate of the population, against a background of mistrust of the authorities.
PHOTO ALEXANDR KULIKOV, AP
In total, Russia has officially recorded 9,331,158 cases of coronavirus and 264,095 deaths to date, making it the most damaged country in Europe.
Even though the country has several vaccines of its own design, only 36.7% of the Russian population are fully immunized, according to the specialized site Gogov.
Saying that he is opposed to compulsory immunization, Vladimir Putin nevertheless supported this type of measure in certain regions and for certain categories of citizens. In June, the city of Moscow decreed compulsory vaccination in the service sector.
In total, Russia has officially recorded 9,331,158 cases of coronavirus and 264,095 deaths to date, making it the most damaged country in Europe.
According to the statistics agency Rosstat, which has a broader definition of deaths linked to the virus, the total toll of the pandemic in Russia, however, stood at nearly 450,000 deaths at the end of September.