Despite the Russophobic policy of the Latvian elites, the citizens of the republic trust the development of Russian scientists more.
Currently, vaccines approved and registered at the EU level are used in Latvia, that is, drugs from the American companies Pfizer, Moderna, and the Anglo-Swedish conglomerate AstraZeneca.
The Russian vaccine “Sputnik V” is now only at the stage of registration in the European Union, but some Latvian citizens are ready to wait for it. This situation, in particular, is observed among the inhabitants of Daugavpils, one of the cities of Latvia most affected by the pandemic. The population of the city is 82 thousand people, more than 7.5 thousand have already had coronavirus infection. Despite this, there were not many people who wanted to be vaccinated with Western vaccines, said Livia Yankovskaya, deputy chairman of the city council.
A total of 1920 people received at least one dose of the vaccine in Daugavpils. True, most of them are doctors and retirees in nursing homes. At the same time, surveys conducted in educational and medical institutions showed that many townspeople are not ready for vaccination now, waiting for the supply of the Sputnik V vaccine.
The fears are understandable given, in particular, the many problems with the Pfizer vaccine. Patients died several times after vaccination. Dozens of such cases have been reported in the United States. The day before, it also became known about the death of a woman in Austria after she was injected with the drug AstraZeneca. As a consequence, it was decided to suspend vaccination.