On August 11, 2020, the head of Moscow's Gamaleya Research Institute, Aleksandar Ginzburg, was preparing for a video conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was about to report to the president that his institute developed in a record-breaking time a vaccine against the COVID-19.
It was a moment that the rest of the world (mostly the West) met with disbelief. Many just couldn't comprehend how the Russians had developed, tested, and registered the vaccine within months. They've publicly rejected and ridiculed the Russian vaccine.
Fast forward to these days, the picture is totally different. More than 50 countries have so far approved the use of Gamaleya's Sputnik-V coronavirus vaccine. The turning point was when the UK-based scientific journal The Lancet confirmed its effectiveness and safety.
Now buyers from around the world, including some Western countries, are queuing up to purchase it, and people are queuing to receive it.
CGTN went to one of the polyclinics in one of Moscow's suburbs. Every day, dozens of people go there to take the Sputnik-V vaccine against COVID-19.
At first, as a result of the widespread campaign against it, among the people, there was a lot of skepticism toward the vaccine. But that is rapidly changing.
"I changed my mind when I saw that these vaccines were delivered abroad, to Europe. I started believing in them and realized that I should take the jab," Boris, a young airport worker from Moscow waiting to get his Sputnik-V jab, told CGTN.
Fruit of 20 years' research
Millions of people in Russia and abroad have already taken Sputnik-V, a vaccine that is the pride and joy of Russia and its developer. CGTN went to meet the people behind the vaccine – the researchers from the Gamaleya Institute.
Over 1,000 people work there. According to Ginzburg, after what happened with the Sputnik-V, scientists are now queuing to get a job in this 130-year-old institute.
He also told CGTN that his colleagues spent the past 20 years developing technology to fight coronaviruses.
"With the help of that technology, we've created a vaccine against MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), which is another coronavirus with the lethality of 38 percent. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, we already knew so much about the development of that type of vaccine," he said.
That's why the Gamaleya Institute needed only several months to produce the vaccine against COVID-19, he said.
The news sent shockwaves among the Western pharmaceutical competitors, as they too were racing not only to save millions of lives, but also for supremacy in the lucrative vaccines market.
"It is a known fact that some companies invested a lot of money and also received funds from their national budget. Pfizer alone received $5 billion from the U.S. and EU. Now they need to justify those funds. That's why some countries have closed their markets to other vaccine producers," said Dmitriy Abzalov, president of the Center for Strategic Communications.
Production of Sputnik-V vaccines is in full swing in Russia, which will also soon start in India, South Korea, and China. That's considered as another demonstration of Sputnik-V's global success and another step toward bringing the COVID-19 pandemic under control.