Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last night that Russia has registered the world’s first vaccine against the Covid-19 coronavirus, a development which, if it lives up to the publicity, will be hailed by the world and certainly by the travel industry.
Putin said the vaccine is effective in forming immunity against the deadly disease.
RT.com, a major Russian news source, quoted Putin yesterday as saying: “As far as I know, a vaccine against the coronavirus infection has been registered this morning (in Russia) for the first time in the world.
“I thank everyone who worked on the vaccine – it’s a very important moment for the whole world.”
Putin revealed that one of his daughters has already been immunised with the new vaccine, which is named Sputnik-V and is said to confer immunity from Covid-19 for up to two years.
“I know that it works rather effectively, forms a stable immunity, and, I repeat, it passed all the necessary inspections,” Putin added.
Russian medical workers and teachers will receive the vaccine first. Putin conceded it could be January before the vaccine enters general circulation.
The vaccine was developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow.
The good news in the battle against Covid-19 was dampened by news from New Zealand, where the country’s largest city has been slammed back into hard lockdown. Health authorities have confirmed a seemingly inexplicable cluster of the coronavirus in a family in Auckland, ending a 102-day run without any locally transmitted infection.
A three-day lockdown has been imposed in Auckland, which will move back into alert level-3 lockdown from midday today. The rest of New Zealand will be placed into level 2. (For an overview of the levels in New Zealand’s Covid-19 alert system, see here.)
A particularly baffling aspect of the New Zealand outbreak is that the four new cases are all members of a single family, none has travelled internationally recently and none has any known connection with border or quarantine facilities, where they might have caught the virus. So far it’s a mystery, though some light may be shed on it today. One of the family had recently visited Rotorua city, a popular tourist attraction in the central North Island.
Economists warn that the coming three days (at least) of lockdown will be devastating for Auckland businesses.
Air New Zealand will close its Auckland lounges and valet parking service at midday today.
“Customers on flights departing from Auckland will be also be required to wear masks,” the airline said .
Air NZ chief executive Greg Foran told Radio NZ the airline was working through social distancing requirements under the raised alert levels.
Air NZ customers who hold a ticket for a domestic flight within New Zealand and are scheduled to depart before 11.59pm Sunday 16 August can choose to hold their fare in credit and can do this via the airline’s online booking tool.
Back to Russia, this is how RT.com broke the news of the seemingly revolutionary new Sputnik-V vaccine.
Written by Peter Needham
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