Big promises, few doses: why Russia's struggling to make Sputnik V doses

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Transforming the site of what once was a Soviet-era car factory into a state-of-the-art facility churning out Russia's COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V was the easy bit.

Making doses in bulk, finding qualified staff and getting equipment have been much bigger headaches for Moscow-based biotech firm R-Pharm and other private Russian companies picked to make the country's flagship shot to fight the pandemic.

President Vladimir Putin has trumpeted the vaccine around the world, and said in March that Russia had signed agreements for the production of 700 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine abroad.

But Russia had produced just 33 million vaccines as of May 12 and exported fewer than 15 million, according to a Reuters tally that counted each vaccine as consisting of two doses.

Russia's output is much lower than the hundreds of millions being made each month by Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/big-promises-few-doses-why-062541356.html

[NickB79]

1. Russia is a third world nation

It's still clinging to it's glory days 50 yr ago, while it's economy and infrastructure fall further apart. Even their economy is largely built around fossil fuels, a soon to be outdated resource.

If it wasn't for their massive stockpile of nukes, they'd be on the same geopolitical level as Brazil or Nigeria.