Even doctors won't take Putin's vaccine as COVID rages in Russia

And now, just a few months later, the country appears to be falling into yet another COVID-19 spiral. Moscow’s intensive care units are crowded with COVID-19 patients, and deaths are mounting. On Tuesday, the Russian capital registered a tragic new daily record of 86 people dead, and almost 700 people on ventilation. The director of Sklifosovsky Research Institute, Sergey Petrikov, has described the new wave as more aggressive, and “much more severe for young people, too.” The clearest explanation for this new wave is a failing vaccination campaign, rooted in public distrust in the government’s stamp of approval. Only 10 percent of the population have received both shots—the rest appear to be in no hurry to get their jabs. Some people waited until Putin got vaccinated in late March, others hesitated even after government vaccine researchers said that Sputnik was more than 90 percent effective. Even Russian doctors are undermining scientists by refusing to take Russian-made vaccines. One third of Russian doctors—36 percent—have doubts about the effectiveness of the Russian vaccine, and almost half of them say they want to wait for more evidence of the vaccine’s effectiveness, according to a social study by Spravochnik Vracha (Doctor’s Manual) last month. Even blessings from a well-regarded medical magazine, The Lancet, did not convince skeptical Russian doctors.