DISINFO: EU does not care about its citizens since it delays approval of Sputnik V for political reasons
SUMMARY
The European countries have been rushing to administer the third dose of the vaccine, in a context of an epidemic outbreak. The umpteenth delay for the certification of Sputnik V leads to the following question: are the interests of the populations really at the heart of the decisions of the European Union officials?
RESPONSE
Recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation about the Sputnik V and its ongoing review by the European Medicines Agency.
RT correctly quotes a Reuters source saying on 21 October that “The EU drug regulator is unlikely to decide whether to approve Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine until at least the first quarter of 2022 because some data needed for the review is still missing”. But RT incorrectly implies that the real reason would be political and financial interests that would endanger the EU population.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) started the rolling review of the Sputnik V vaccine on 4 March 2021. At the beginning of September 2021, EMA stated it was still waiting for necessary additional data from Sputnik V's manufacturers before it can authorise the vaccine.
The EMA and EU leaders have publicly stated they will welcome Sputnik V if it meets the applied standards for vaccines. In fact, problems with inconsistent, problematic or missing data and lack of transparency have been regularly reported regarding Sputnik V, leading some international health regulators to consider the information yet insufficient.
As Marcus Ederer, the EU ambassador to Russia stated:
WHO has publicly voiced a number of identified problems and suspended the vaccine recognition procedure. Therefore, all questions about the timing should be asked to the Russian authorities. The Russian side has repeatedly postponed the timing of the inspection requested by the EMA, which slows down the process. These are the facts. This is a technical, not a political process. When Russian officials talk about delays and politicization on the European side, it sometimes seems to me that they mostly talk about themselves, since they are the ones who politicize this issue.
Read also related cases: The campaign to discredit and denigrate the Sputnik V vaccine is funded by foreign states, Western pretexts not to approve Sputnik V are false, this is negationism, The EU doesn’t approve Sputnik V due to political and artificial prejudices, and EMA is still biased against Sputnik V while there are no concerns about side effects.