Moscow: Online Booking for Coronavirus Vaccines to Begin Next Friday

Mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin announced, Thursday, that online booking for Coronavirus vaccines will begin in Moscow next Friday.

Online booking for health workers, teachers and social service workers, deemed at higher risk of severe infection, will open Friday, Sobyanin wrote on his website.

“The vaccination centers will begin to work on Dec. 5,” Sobyanin added.

"More doses will be available in the coming weeks,” he added, affirming that the Russian capital will expand its list of eligible vaccine recipients.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the mass vaccination among the Russian population to start late next week, having doctors and teachers first in line to receive the country's Sputnik V vaccine.

Moscow’s results are only the second from a late-stage human trial, following on swiftly from data released by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech, which said their shot was also more than 90% effective.

Experts mentioned the Russian data was encouraging and reinforced the idea the pandemic could be halted by vaccines, nonetheless, they warned that the results were only based on a small number of trial volunteers who had contracted COVID-19.

The analysis was conducted after 20 participants developed the virus and examined how many had received the vaccine versus a placebo. That is significantly lower than the 94 infections in the trial of the vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

“I assume there was political pressure after the press release from Pfizer and BioNTech earlier in the week to now draw level with their own data,”  Bodo Plachter, deputy director of the Institute of Virology at the Mainz University, said. “What is missing for now is an analysis of statistical significance.”