DISINFO: WHO says that the Sputnik V vaccine is in Phase 3 of clinical testing
SUMMARY
On August 20, the World Health Organisation recognised around 140 projects to fight Covid-19, but only a handful of them are on Phase 3, which is the clinical testing in humans at a massive scale. One of them is the Sputnik V.
RESPONSE
The claim is false. On August 20th 2020, the World Health Organisation published a landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines that considered the Russian project developed by Gamaleya Research Institute (registered as Sputnik V) as being still in Phase 1 of clinical testing. The WHO initiated talks with Russian authorities about undertaking a review of the vaccine, though it refused to endorse it right away and expressed some reservations about the procedure followed by Russia given that the country hasn’t completed large trials to test the vaccine’s safety and efficacy and experts consider that rolling out an inadequately vetted vaccine could endanger people who receive it. This is part of a Russian disinformation campaign on the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine launched after the announcement of its registration was met with scepticism and criticism, even by Russian specialists in the country. See other examples in our database, such as claims that the WHO and Microsoft sabotaged it, that the West criticized it because it can’t accept Russia’s primacy or that Bloomberg affirmed that this vaccine makes Putin the protector of the people.