The Chinese-made vaccine Sinopharm will be available for people in Kazakhstan. The delivery of one million doses of this vaccine to the country is expected this month. Kazakh Health Ministry continues to negotiate with the Pfizer company to make their vaccines available to Kazakh citizens as well. Now those who want to get vaccinated can choose between two available vaccines – the Russian Sputnik V and the Kazakh QazVac.
We have 10.2 million doses of Sputnik V. The delivery of about 5 million doses of the first component and 4.5 million doses of the second one has already been completed. The gap in deliveries between the first and the second components is about 15 to 20 days. We procured nearly 3 million units of the two-dose QazVac. We have delivered 274,000 doses,” said Yerzhan Ospanov, Managing Director of SK-Pharmacy LLP.
To date, more than 5.6 million Kazakh citizens have already been vaccinated. Over 4 million of them have completed both stages of immunization.
Kazakh residents were divided into several sides in choosing the vaccine. Some trust the domestic vaccine, others want to receive only the Russian one, and others are still waiting for the delivery of European vaccines, such as Pfizer or AstraZeneca. Experts are sure that their effectiveness is about the same.
“All vaccines have gone through the same research path. All showed an effect on reproductive functions, effects on the brain, heart, lungs, genitals – that is, this has been verified in long-term experiments. It is possible to compare vaccines in terms of safety – all vaccines today, including on the platform of an inactivated virus (for example, Kazakh), and vector (for example, Russian vaccine), and RNA vaccine (for example, Pfizer) – they are approximately equally safe!” noted Alexander Gulyayev, Expert at the National Center for Expertise of Medicines and Medical Devices.
Meanwhile, the campaigning of the so-called “anti-vaxxers” continues on social media, from information about the dangers of vaccines, ending with a worldwide conspiracy. Doctors remind again: all vaccines are absolutely safe and verified as a result of repeated clinical studies. They advise not to neglect the calls of doctors for immunization and emphasize: the vaccine, first of all, saves not from infection, but from death.
Translation by Saniya Sakenova
Editing by Galiya Khassenkhanova
