A senior European Medicines Agency (EMA) official urged European Union members on Sunday to refrain from granting national approvals for Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V while the agency reviews its safety and effectiveness.
Mikhail Gorbachev turned 90 on Tuesday, with several world leaders sending well-wishes to the former leader of the Soviet Union. The ex-leader of the Soviet Union and secretary-general of the Communist Party is considered by some as one of the greatest reformers of the 20th century — but remains a controversial figure at home.
Russia approved a third coronavirus vaccine for domestic use, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on state TV, though large-scale clinical trials of the shot, labeled CoviVac and produced by the Chumakov Centre, have yet to begin.
Britain this Monday will call for the United Nations to be given urgent and unfettered access to Xinjiang to investigate reports of abuses in the Chinese region.
Russia announced on Saturday that its scientists had detected the world's first case of transmission of the H5N8 strain of avian flu from birds to humans and had alerted the World Health Organization.
Supply of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine and the possible elaboration of the shots in Argentina were among the issues addressed by Argentine president Alberto Fernandez and Russia's Vladimir Putin during a Tuesday phone conference.
The Russian Sputnik V vaccine is 91.6% effective against Covid 19 in its symptomatic manifestations, according to the medical journal The Lancet . “The trial results show a strong protective effect consistent across all age groups of participants,” the researchers explain.
Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was sentenced to three and a half years in a penal colony after a Moscow court found him guilty of disobeying the terms of his probation over the 2014 money laundering case. In the Tuesday ruling, however, the court also took into account the time Navalny had spent under house arrest, meaning that the Kremlin critic would spend only two years and eight months behind bars.
Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the growing influence of U.S. social media companies and said their impact on society now puts them in competition with elected governments.
Argentine vice-president Cristina Fernandez released on Sunday a picture of her being inoculated with the first doses of the Russian Sputnik vaccine against Covid-19. “Not only I am looking after myself, but also looking after all the rest of us”, said the strong woman of Argentina in social networks.