"Breaking the population is wrong - all people are different": Golikova on the vaccination campaign, vaccines and the situation with COVID-19

- Let's start right away with vaccination.

How is this campaign going in Russia in general?

- Well, you know that the president announced a mass vaccination of the population.

At first, it was large-scale, when the volume of vaccine production was small.

We tried, set up the regions for this work, opened vaccination centers, trained personnel, and attracted volunteers to this work.

Now we already understand how this is organized.

More than 6,000 vaccination points have been opened in our country.

The constituent entities of the Russian Federation organized this work on their territory.

We have a centralized company that delivers vaccines to the regions from manufacturers' warehouses and there are no problems in this sense.

- How much do we need to produce?

- You know, we have a plan for the first half of the year of about 89 million sets of doses.

These are three vaccines: the first vaccine "Sputnik", "EpiVacCorona" of Novosibirsk "Vector" and now "KoviVac" of the Chumakov Center - for these three products we have 89 million dose kits, that's how we call it, since all three are two-component.

And so that there is understanding, we have determined for ourselves the number that we must inoculate in order to achieve herd immunity - this is almost 69 million people, 68.9 million people.

We are actively moving in this direction and estimate that even at the rates that we currently have, we can reach these figures in August, but we think that the rates will be more active.

- Why do we think so?

Here I am this morning ...

- And I see that there is a commitment of people to vaccination.

- You see, but I see that there is a huge anti-vaccination lobby.

I've been receiving a text message this morning directly from my friend.

He also works in the government.

- Probably because we live in Moscow.

- So what?

- Well, here is the number of citizens who - well, I don't know what word to use - relate to vaccination ...

- With disbelief.

- With distrust or caution, I would say, it is slightly more than in the regions.

- You think?

- Yes.

It seems to me.

- I can see that it really is a whole sect, it is millions of people.

These are mainly mothers who refuse to vaccinate their children according to the calendar.

- Well, according to the calendar to my children, probably, yes, of course, we came across, but this is explanatory work that should be carried out, and which is being carried out.

It is clear that we cannot convert everyone to this faith and, probably, we should not act this way, since vaccination is voluntary, and in accordance with the law, it is voluntary.

But nevertheless, the consequences of the transferred disease for the subsequent state of human health are much more difficult than being vaccinated on a voluntary basis.

- Here we see that vaccination is proceeding, we say, at a good pace, at the same time, if we compare, for example, with the United States, it is much slower.

Well, how many do we have now?

There are 6.5 million people in the area, yes, vaccinated?

- Yes.

- One component.

This is 10 times less than in the United States.

Well, yes, our population is smaller, but not 10 times.

Does this mean that the population itself is still against it?

- You know, I don't think so.

Do not try to convince me of this.

I, probably, also initially had the same attitude to this.

- So you didn't really believe either, did you?

“I’m not that I didn’t believe.

There were simply different estimates at the start of how much will be committed to vaccination.

At the first stage, the number of people who wanted to be vaccinated was less than the number of people that we see now.

We can see this from the requests of the regions of the country, which are asked to additionally present the possibility of obtaining a vaccine.

We see this from the records of citizens on the single portal of public services, and we see how gradually, slowly, but gradually the attitude towards this is changing.

Probably because during the period when there was a spring morbidity, when we first encountered, no one still fully understood how it was, what it was.

- Then, last year, huh?

- Then, in March, in April, what is this disease.

There were a lot of Kovid dissidents, who, in general, probably still exist.

- They still exist.

- And they are all over the world.

But, having lived for a year in this situation, having already understood more or less how this disease behaves, having got sick in their family, in their immediate environment, and sometimes, unfortunately, even died from this disease, people began to treat this according to -other.

And at first, at the first stage, when we just started to vaccinate, we did not have the opportunity to observe how the situation develops after vaccination, whether there are those notorious antibodies that are now being followed by everyone, who are not being followed when they are vaccinated against the flu or from some other disease.

- Now, in general, everyone meets in companies and says: "How many antibodies do you have left?"

- Yes Yes Yes.

Of course.

And people received from all sources some kind of education about COVID-19 and about everything that should work from COVID-19.

And it seems to me that the confidence that this should be done is growing.

And this is correct, it should be so.

- Here I am today, nevertheless, in the morning, right at 7 am, I receive an SMS from my friend.

He seems to have to deal with such global problems, and at the same time he writes to me, asks me whether to get vaccinated.

And he begins to tell me for a long time why it really does not need to be done, and convinces himself of this.

And in the end, all the correspondence ends with him saying: "In general, I believe that COVID-19 is an international conspiracy in someone's interests."

How would you convince such a person?

- Good question.

I always come from the positive, not from the negative.

And therefore, all arguments must be positive.

Unfortunately, I have been together with specialists for a year in this process, and I watched how it all came, how it developed, how people got sick, how hard they tolerated it, and, perhaps, I will repeat it again, I do not wish mortality to anyone or death from this terrible disease.

This is the first thing.

And second: I do not wish the consequences of the postponed COVID-19 to anyone.

It seems that you have recovered, maybe sometimes you even had an asymptomatic illness, but you need to look at your blood counts, you need to look at their change.

And if a person has suffered and continues to suffer from some kind of chronic diseases of the cardiovascular system, or someone has hypertension, perhaps some other diseases ...

- Diabetes.

- Diabetes, yes.

For them, the transferred COVID-19 aggravates the course of the disease.

And now we see that in a number of cases, when mortality does not occur from COVID-19, but people have a history of COVID-19, in the first wave they die from the fact that COVID-19 has affected the course of a chronic disease.

- So it's a post-covid?

- This is a post-view.

And I think the world has yet to draw a conclusion on this matter.

By the way, I want to say that we, as Russia, initiated the creation of an intercountry working group on the basis of the World Health Organization to analyze in general what has happened and is happening now with regard to mortality in all countries, because all countries have excess mortality, COVID -19 appeared just now, a year.

And what to do?

How to analyze the situation?

How to behave in the future?

And, in fact, the working group has been created.

Three co-chairs: Russia, Ireland and South Africa.

It has begun work, and we have to carry out this work seriously at the intercountry level.

- That is, we do not understand yet what excess mortality from COVID-19 is, right?

- We understand in the framework of those cases where COVID-19 is a clearly confirmed main cause of death, and the long-term consequences of COVID-19 and the impact on the course of other chronic diseases are yet to be assessed.

- But really, if there are such different statistics: in America, for example, there is one statistics, there is some absolutely outrageous.

- Well, everyone has their own methodology.

- Here.

How does our methodology differ, for example, from the American one?

- The first thing I want to say ...

- Why are we lower?

- In our country, if it is appropriate to say this in relation to mortality, police records are kept of all births and all deaths.

We have a civil registration system that has been completely modernized, connected between the tax service, Rosstat and medical organizations, and we, in principle, keep records of births and deaths every day.

It's another matter that then medical documents are the basis for already establishing a specific cause of death and those publications that Rosstat carries out in our country, therefore, in principle, every day we know how many died in our country, no matter where: they died in hospital, died at home. , died on the street - it doesn't matter.

Few people have such a mortality accounting.

And when we analyzed excess mortality in other countries, according to, of course, the official statistics that are given, we see that some countries do not keep records of deaths at home.

Some countries attribute everything to COVID-19, that is, in a covid era ...

- If a person died in a pandemic, then he definitely died from COVID-19?

- And he died, yes.

And he died of COVID-19, yes.

But then another question arises: when we analyze other causes, what will happen there, such a sharp decline, if everyone died from COVID-19?

That is, there is a certain slyness here.

It seems to me that the countries have not yet decided what is better: to attribute everything to COVID-19 as excess mortality, but then it will still be noticeable and visible, but what about the rest of the reasons?

There cannot be such a dramatic decrease in mortality for other reasons, if there was an increase in all previous periods, right?

This requires a rather serious analysis and therefore, in fact, we began to talk about the need to have an intercountry assessment, a single approach, because we are all members of the World Health Organization and it would be more correct here for it to give a general methodological assessment of approaches to these questions.

- Let's talk about WHO.

Now we all see the monstrous scandal that is taking place around the

AstraZeneca

vaccine

, which, by the way, when the Sputnik-

V

vaccine appeared

, almost became our partner, the Oxford vaccine.

Almost all European countries have suspended, or temporarily suspended, or have restricted its use now, because it allegedly leads to cases of thromboembolism or thrombosis.

At the same time, the WHO says that it is too early to draw such hasty conclusions and, in principle, it may not need to be suspended.

What do you think?

How do you feel about this scandal in general?

This is a purely everyday opinion I ask.

- We are very careful about any data in general that are associated with the consequences of the use of certain products.

Why?

Because we do not have the opportunity to fully verify this on medical data.

In this case, we can only talk about ourselves.

And here I can clearly say that the country is closely monitoring all post-vaccination complications.

Firstly, we have this obligatory by law, we have it, and in our country, if a post-vaccination complication occurs, an urgent notification is always sent to Rospotrebnadzor in order for colleagues to assess this situation, in order to establish a causal an investigative relationship - from vaccination or from some other reason, and so on.

And here I would be based solely on our experience, when we very clearly track all this and establish whether it is really from a vaccine.

We use the same information resources when assessing the situation with AstraZeneca, Moderna or Pfizer.

Yes, there are publications.

There were also publications on Pfizer that there were cases of complications.

There were many cases of complications in Norway, but as a country we cannot finally put an end to it and confirm that this was so, because we simply do not have medical documents.

And in this sense, the World Health Organization, since it is global and unites countries, of course, should analyze the situation and the vaccination process in general, and the use of vaccines should not be politicized, since all vaccination is set up for only one thing - to maximize the protection of the population and its salvation. ...

Also on russian.rt.com Due to the alleged side effects: more and more European countries suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine

- But now we are not politicizing this issue as a country?

- We are talking about the fact that the country has created three of its products.

We say that in accordance with the requirements that are established in the country and at international sites, we conduct the same preclinical, clinical, post-registration clinical studies in order to prove that our products are effective, safe and of high quality that they allow protect the population from morbidity and, most importantly, mortality and severe consequences of the course of COVID-19, and like others, we tell the whole world about these products.

Why not?

This is our achievement, this is our dignity.

This is, after all, an assessment of our science, which they have all the time tried to belittle and say that we are not capable of anything.

We are capable, we have quite a lot of experience in this direction and why we should not be proud of it.

I attribute this to pride, to the country, to opportunities, and not to the fact that we are politicizing this story.

- In America, at least in the press, such thoughts are very often heard now that Russians come in with this vaccine as with a nuclear weapon, as with such a ram.

- We just want to emphasize again, we are talking about the product that our scientists have made and our manufacturers scaled up.

And the goal we are pursuing is the same - to maximally protect the population, first of all, of our country, the population that lives in the regions, and to say that we have such a product and we are ready to share our best practices.

- You say we have three vaccines, we made three vaccines, but nevertheless we still have only one vaccine - "Sputnik-

V

" - in the public domain.

Where do we have, for example, the EpiVacCorona vaccine, which has been talked about for eight months?

- Well, let's.

She checked in later.

She appeared in registration in October.

Starting from this moment, as soon as it appeared in the registration, it is being worked out.

- What does it mean?

- This means that the product is being developed for subsequent scaling.

He went through the "clinic", went through all the necessary research and the issuance of a registration certificate, the possibility of his release into civil circulation for use by the population was confirmed.

And "Sputnik", and "EpiVacCorona", and now the Chumakov vaccine - they all go through stages that are invisible to you and me.

We registered, then the development proceeds, then the quality control of the corresponding batches goes in order to check that the really released product corresponds to the documentation that was declared for it during registration.

Only after that is the entry into civilian circulation and the scaling procedure.

"Sputnik", since it was registered earlier, it went through the scaling procedure earlier, and now I can say that we have learned to produce this product in large volumes.

For example, in April we will have already produced and available to citizens more than 12 million sets of doses of the Sputnik vaccine.

And since the end of March, we now have the same scaling for EpiVacCorona.

Already half a million will go into civilian circulation.

In my opinion, on March 28 the first deliveries of KoviVac.

- That is, Chumakovskaya?

- Chumakov Center.

- Oh yes, by the way ... You yourself were vaccinated?

- Yes.

- What?

"Sputnik"?

- Not.

- Not?

With what?

Chumakovskaya?

- Not.

- Come on?

Are you EpiVacKorona?

- Yes.

- And you have antibodies?

- Yes.

- Come on?

- True.

- And a good title?

- Normal.

- There were no consequences?

- Not.

- That is, there was not such a temperature, nothing, right?

- Not.

They're just, all three products are all different.

They are made using different technologies.

They probably do not need to be compared, that they are the same.

I'll start, for example, with "KoviVac", with the Chumakov vaccine, which, by the way, many have been waiting for.

- Yes.

- And they are waiting, because it was made on the basis of an institute that is known all over the world.

- Poliomyelitis.

- Yes.

The site is WHO prequalified, the only site in Russia.

She produces the yellow fever vaccine.

- 40 million doses a year, yes.

- Yes.

She provides the whole world.

And this is an inactivated vaccine, which was made using this technology, and, in fact, many people tell me that just now, soon we will be inoculated with this vaccine.

Cool.

We only welcome this.

EpiVacCorona is made using new technology.

She is, one might say, a synthetic vaccine.

- Peptide, right?

- Peptide, yes.

And she, perhaps, does not yet have such a spread, and therefore, perhaps, they speak so carefully about her.

- Now there is such distrust, by the way, to EpiVacCorona.

There are rumors that in general all studies have failed.

- Not.

There is no such.

There are probably just not enough publications on this, but I very much expect that soon these publications will appear, and these myths that it is ineffective will be debunked.

- If you say that vaccination is generally safe, and we monitor all this safety, isn't it easier for the state to make this vaccination more or less compulsory?

Or, at least, this is not compulsory, but very compelling, as in Israel.

If you don’t want to be vaccinated, don’t leave the house.

- Russia has a fairly rich experience in vaccination.

We are already accustomed to the fact that vaccination in our country is voluntary.

And it seems to me that it is wrong to change the population now that they must go now or not leave their homes, because they are not vaccinated - well, this is wrong, if only because all people are different.

Someone has a medical objection to vaccination.

- I do not mean a medical challenge.

- You just said: "Don't leave the house."

Well, how's that?

- So.

As in Israel.

- Does it mean to restrict human rights?

- Yes.

Well, of course, because the pandemic has limited human rights.

Now we cannot fly, move around the world, we cannot walk without masks.

- But why?

We can do this carefully, and without masks we, I really hope, will walk when we get herd immunity, when the number of infections will sharply decrease, because we must carry out that very vaccination.

- Here.

I'm talking about this.

- But, by the way, for everyone, the flu vaccination went unnoticed.

We set ourselves the task of vaccinating 70 million people and vaccinated.

- Come on?

70 million people in Russia vaccinated against influenza?

- Yes.

Nobody even noticed that we were vaccinated.

We didn't force anyone.

Appropriate vaccination sites have been set up, including mobile vaccination sites.

And, by the way, in the absence of a coronavirus vaccine back then, it wasn’t even then and we didn’t start to vaccinate it, people were very active in getting vaccinated against the flu, because even then they said that with a high degree of probability COVID-19 would be a seasonal infection very similar to a common cold.

A person is so arranged that he believes that maybe if he gets vaccinated against the flu, then he will not get sick with COVID-19, and people walked.

• © RT

- And they never asked what, by the way.

Didn't ask what antibodies you have?

- Antibodies.

By the way, I started with this.

Do you have flu antibodies?

Oh, what is it?

No one will even say that now.

But we all understand perfectly well that the vaccinations that were given to us in childhood and continue to be given to children, they produce antibodies for a very long time.

For example, I was specially tested for myself for the resistance of immunity to those diseases from which I was vaccinated when I was born and was little.

- For example, measles?

- Yes.

- Do you still have antibodies to measles?

- There are still antibodies.

- Here I have already washed, for example.

- I still have it.

And they said to me: "Well, in three more years try it, check the antibodies, but now you have no need to protect yourself by means of vaccination."

- Were there many people around you who had been ill with COVID-19?

- You know, Anton, in the first wave it was somehow not very good, although you were sick, well, of course, it reached you, but it is impossible not to reach me, because ...

- Everyone's calling.

- They call, yes.

And, of course, in some cases they ask for help, especially at the first stage, when not everything was as well organized as we already see it now.

And in the second wave, of course, already in families, the closest friends, the closest relatives began to get sick.

But we must understand the difference between the first and second waves.

We did not know this disease.

We defended ourselves by the fact that the president made a decision about this time for self-isolation.

This allowed us to organize all the systems, to develop the necessary products that had to be used as antiquarian products: personal protective equipment, medical equipment, hospital preparation, and so on and so forth.

But we, like other European countries, did not leave during the second wave for self-isolation, for a lockdown.

And in our country, as in the period of any other infection or epidemic, there was a natural anti-epidemic of the population.

- What does it mean?

That is, people ...

- People were sick.

People were sick, people were leaving, but we assessed the situation perfectly well that if we close now, it will be a psychological blow for people, because people did not tolerate self-isolation, and for the economy.

And we were looking for a compromise, so all efforts were directed, on the one hand, at a more thorough organization of restrictive measures in all regions of the country.

Maybe masks, social distancing, gloves, sanitizers are not pleasant, but this is a guarantee of limiting the spread.

And, of course, we tried in every way to scale up the production of the vaccine in order to put it into use as soon as possible.

Therefore, I guess.

We have two stages: large-scale, this is when we just started, and mass vaccination, which was announced by the president.

When we already realized that we can, and then the president said about it, but still it was necessary to debug the system.

And now it continues to be debugged, but now it is already being debugged simply by increasing the number of vaccination points, the possibilities of organizing a mobile, accessibility for sparsely populated areas and remote points.

- Available?

Here too again.

They write to me all the time in the comments: "Not available", "We have a queue in some Penza or Samara, endlessly we are waiting - waiting."

- I can't tell you that everything went right like this so well from the very beginning and there were no problems.

Of course, there are problems, and it would be irresponsible to say that these problems do not exist, for various reasons, I will not even name them.

- Including the vaccine is not 100 million.

- But we are developing it, we are sending it practically from the wheels to use.

As soon as it passes quality control, we try to release it immediately into civil circulation.

- Here, too, everyone asks, is there any difference where to get the vaccine?

How many production facilities do we have for this vaccine?

- In what sense?

- But literally.

They asked me: "Where did you make the vaccine?"

I say: "I did at the Gamaleya Institute, because I did under the camera."

They say: "Here you are a thug, you made at the institute of Gamaleya, and in the polyclinics there must be some other product."

- Oh, what are you!

We have all the sites that produce vaccines today, they are all GMP certified.

They all produce a quality product.

These sites are famous all over the world.

- How many?

- Oh, there are already a lot of them, I don't even want to ... There are a lot of sites on Sputnik.

There, one manufacturer has several sites that are now engaged in this production, scaling this production and releasing it into civilian circulation.

Each batch that comes out is subject to quality control.

Quality control is carried out by Roszdravnadzor and after the quality control has passed, the vaccine is released into civil circulation.

It is all marked absolutely.

- Well, you never know what is marked!

This is how a person thinks.

- No, well, Anton, of course, everything can be exposed ...

- And people question everything.

- Doubt, but ...

- You are Muscovites, you are thieves, you have everything there at the Gamaleya Institute.

And here, let's say, in some Tynda, water was brought to the clinic.

- No, there is no such thing.

There is no such thing, and I declare responsibly.

Therefore, there is ... We sometimes mention the figures of production and entry into civilian circulation.

For example, 17.6 million doses of kits were produced, and 10 million were released into civilian circulation.

Where are the others?

The rest are under quality control, and as soon as quality control is completed, the vaccine goes into civilian circulation.

We carry out the distribution by regions of the country, based on the developed by us, this is our know-how, epidemiological and mathematical model.

It contains the appropriate data, and each time it recalculates how much needs to be vaccinated in a particular region in order to achieve herd immunity by a certain date.

This date, August, I named it, is the average for Russia.

- Why August?

We're waiting for some kind of seasonal ... Or what?

- Not.

We do not expect anything, it is just, based on mathematics, it turns out, from the pace that we have, and based on mathematics, it turns out August.

Now we will build up, I think, we will move to the left.

- That is, until July, for example?

- Yes.

- You said that the first wave was different from the second, and the second - from the first.

Here's what?

- What was the difficulty for us on the first?

The difficulty was that we first encountered this disease.

The most that we had, we had international publications, Chinese experience, how they worked, but we read it all, studied it all, but did not have our own.

Actually, these two months that we had from January to March, when we started the massive spread of COVID-19, were used by us in order to prepare.

It was, in contrast to other countries, the front.

At the federal level, by the decision of the president, all the bodies that monitored the situation and appropriate decision-making were created very quickly.

There was a headquarters under my leadership, which is now in constant operation.

There is a coordination council, headed by the chairman of the government, which unites federal bodies and constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

Yes, the working group of the State Council, headed by Sergei Semyonovich Sobyanin, is still functioning.

This is how we unite and work out the appropriate directions.

In January, a national pandemic response plan was adopted.

And in our country, perhaps, it was imperceptible to you, but we had a certain set of actions that we had to carry out in order to prevent a catastrophic development of the situation.

On the first wave, we opened about 190 thousand beds in order to provide assistance to patients with COVID-19.

- Countrywide?

- Countrywide.

- On the basis of already existing medical institutions?

- On the basis of existing ones, and we have built.

We built a lot with the help of the Ministry of Defense, the regions themselves built infectious diseases hospitals, including pre-fabricated ones.

But the peculiarity of the country is the following: we have a length of 10 thousand kilometers from west to east.

And in our country, the spread of the disease still came from the west.

We very quickly closed the border with China, in the east, and we did not have the import of the Chinese strain into the territory of the Russian Federation.

We imported it from Europe.

In March, when our citizens, without listening to anything, went anyway, everything was already closed there, but they went anyway.

There were cheap vouchers, they took advantage of this, and, in fact, brought from there.

And in the first wave, the western, central part suffered more, well, we call it the central part: Moscow, the Moscow region, nearby regions, well, practically the Central Federal District.

The spread to the east proceeded very slowly.

And when we were in the second wave, we were already covered by COVID-19 throughout the country.

Here, more beds have already been opened.

We have already opened 290 thousand beds.

True, now we have only 130 thousand left.

- So we're bringing them back?

- We're bringing them back.

We return something, something we don’t return, because they were built as infectious.

They will now function as infectious not only for COVID-19, but for all other infections that will spread, if any.

Actually, such a planned movement allowed us to both contain and organize the processes correctly.

Of course, the load on the regions, the load on the medical staff, on the entire health care system was probably the same that we did not observe during our existence and our work.

It was such a very serious challenge, but nevertheless I want to say that the system has coped with it, and the doctors have worked very selflessly and continue to work.

- And when did we realize that this was a really serious challenge, at what moment?

- We understood immediately.

- Okay?

- True.

I am not dissembling.

Maybe the number of people who immediately believed in it was small at the initial stage, but we first started talking about it carefully in November 2019, when the first messages from China began to appear that a new virus had appeared, but since there was information not enough, our epidemiologists very actively monitored this situation: all publications, and everything that appeared.

And in December, on the eve of the New Year, I tell this story all the time, Anna Yuryevna Popova and I joked.

I say: “Anna Yurievna, how is the Chinese strain there?

Will we have New Year's holidays or will we not have New Year's holidays? "

We, in fact, did not have an answer to this question, because we did not understand, but we understood that some very serious process was going on.

We have already made all the decisions in January.

We already in January made a decision to close the borders.

We realized that it was spreading very quickly.

- So the borders were closed in March?

- In January, the borders were buried.

- Not.

Wait.

Well, at the end of January with China, one border.

- Of course.

No, we closed one by one.

We closed with China, we closed with all neighboring states through which it can penetrate.

- Mongolia, Kazakhstan, right?

- Yes.

Then we closed with Japan and South Korea.

We closed with Iran.

When we saw how the distribution was going, we closed.

Why didn't we close, for example, with Italy, where the largest distribution was going on?

Because she was and is a member of the European Union, meaning a Schengen visa ...

- That is, we could not partially, right?

- People are moving, they have free movement.

If their border is not closed, then movement is still possible, in fact, as it is happening now.

A new English strain has appeared.

We have suspended air links with Great Britain, but this does not mean that it will not be delivered to us through other countries.

Since the moment of observation, that is, since December, we have checked eight thousand passengers who flew in from the UK or arrived from other countries.

This is the kind of monitoring, by the way, that we have established, including thanks to the response system that we had, but which just grew by several steps during the pandemic.

We have the Rospotrebnadzor army, I call it in a good sense the army, because it is a paramilitary organization, people in crimson uniforms ...

- They are all in uniforms.

- Yes, who meet us at the airports.

But they organized, together with our aviation authorities, the work so that we were able to carry out both thermometry and observation of those whom we consider suspicious.

Actually, thanks to this work, relevant studies were carried out to assess the quality and effectiveness of our vaccines against these mutated viruses.

- Do vaccines work?

- They work.

- All of Europe is now closing on the third wave.

We see country after country declaring a total lockdown in full.

Poland closed yesterday.

Why don't we do this?

- We do not see any grounds for closing now.

We are in a period of stabilization and decline, and this period has been going on since December.

In December, at the end, we treated this with caution, fearing the New Year holidays, since people will move even within the country and will go abroad, to those states with which communication is open.

But that did not happen.

We are still experiencing a steady decline in the disease.

We sensibly assess the situation in March-April, because March-April is traditional.

- March — April last year or this year?

- The current one.

- That is, we understand in the future that there may be a third wave?

- There may be a slight rise.

- But why is it big everywhere, and we have a small one?

- We see how the epidemiological situation is developing in them and in our country.

By the way, one of the reasons for this development is that they were permanently closed.

People stayed at home, they did not go outside, they are sterile in the sense of the virus.

They go out and they get ...

- That is, they have never developed this very collective immunity, right?

- Well, in fact, yes.

- And we - yes?

- In fact, yes.

Well, plus we have started vaccination.

- They also started it.

- We continue ... It is different for everyone.

- Well, how?

- Very differently.

In Europe, the level of vaccination of the population is not so high.

We see how you said in the middle of the conversation that there are some scandals going on all the time, some sort of showdown over the distribution of the vaccine between countries: some more, some less, less vaccinated, more.

People are as careful as we are about what they are vaccinated with and the consequences of this vaccination.

Therefore, we are clearly observing the situation.

We have our own epidemiological monitoring system.

We focus on it.

We have preserved from the times of the Soviet Union, I believe that this was an absolutely correct decision, the system of sanitary and epidemiological supervision.

Our epidemiological scientists are working, they are studying this situation.

They look, they make forecasts, they look at what is being done around the country in order to tell us in a timely manner about the need to take restrictive measures.

We also faced a choice in November: we need to reintroduce lockdown or self-isolation or still restrict ourselves to those measures, strict restrictive measures that we can introduce, again returning masks, gloves, sanitizers, and so on, restricting the work of certain establishments where there is a large concentration people, limiting visits to 50%, to 25%, in different ways, depending on the epidemiological situation in the regions.

We believe that with such measures we have better regulated the situation than our colleagues from other countries.

I do not judge them, this is their decision, this is their choice, they decided that it would be more correct for their country, but, of course, the situation is scary, the situation with the numbers in Norway, in France, what is happening now in distant Brazil, where for 90 thousand a day is revealed.

But on the one hand, identification is good.

This means we understand what we are dealing with.

But what is important is the load on the network on the medical one, whether it copes, and how many people actually die from COVID-19 - this is a difficult topic that countries are going through and, probably, because of this, they make such decisions that they make.

- As a whole, to be honest, to be honest, has passed or is passing, still nothing is over, there will probably be a seasonal increase in numbers now, our medical system this whole story?

But no one expected that she could withstand it.

Well, let's just say, maybe you expected, but the number of skeptics was probably higher.

- Such a challenge, I think that no one, before whom we found ourselves, expected, but we did a lot.

Once again, I will simply repeat that we still have a Sanitary and Epidemiological Service that assesses the situation.

We still have an infectious disease service in Russia.

At the time of the start of the pandemic, there were 25 thousand infectious beds in our country, which were isolated.

Fifty and a half in total, and 25 thousand are isolated, who were able to provide assistance at the moment.

- That is, we put the first people there, in infectious diseases, right?

- Yes.

Then we deployed the so-called covid departments and covid hospitals.

We equipped them in accordance with the requirements that we developed.

During this entire period, we have retrained 1 million 600 thousand of our doctors so that they have the opportunity to provide care to covid patients, although their specialization is different.

We have introduced payments to healthcare workers for work with COVID-19.

We insured medical workers for work with COVID-19.

It is clear that there were mistakes.

It is clear that there were complaints and discontent.

Now this system has been worked out.

We have learned to quickly produce and have practically filled the market with our personal protective equipment and our medical products.

- What do you mean by medical devices?

- Apparatus for artificial lung ventilation.

- Come on?

Are our ventilators?

- Of course.

Then, of the 1,500 various types of medical products registered during this period, including masks and everything else, 1,300 are Russian.

We have developed our own medicines, our own vaccines.

We, in fact, have passed a very difficult, thorny path of all this, but the system has coped.

When we realized that the load on the medical network was growing during the second wave, in November, in December, but there are different patients: there are average patients, there are severe ones, and there are very difficult ones.

For those who do not need inpatient treatment, we have introduced an outpatient provision with free medicines.

We have allocated financial resources now, and for March, and for February, and for December, and for January.

We already know that 2.7 billion rubles a month is what we need in order to provide drugs for free on an outpatient basis so as not to overload.

When we started to do this, we stopped the increase in the opening of new beds for COVID-19, because we made it possible for people to stay at home and receive these drugs where they do not need assistance.

So that's it.

- Were you sure that we can handle it?

- Was.

You know, some were very worried, by the way, including me.

There were days, this was in April last year, when we were afraid that we would not be able to cope with the speed of what needs to be done, that we would not be in time, but nevertheless, I believe that everything worked as they should have worked.

We are also talking about the heads of the country's regions.

We are talking about the medical system and industry.

The camp has become very consolidated.

You know, I believe that our main achievement, the main outcome of 2020, is consolidation in the face of this threat.

Now we are less likely to talk about COVID-19, because we are seeing a decrease in the incidence, but when there were the most tense moments, we always remember that it was a matter of consolidating efforts, that everyone should work.

It is clear that there may be mistakes.

It seems to me that the main result is the very consolidation and demonstration, first of all, to each other, that we can do this.

- What is consolidation?

Is that what you mean?

- I mean work ...

- That is, was it really that there was such a feeling?

- Work for the result.

- Yes?

The whole world?

- The whole world.

Today I cannot name someone in relation to whom I would say: "You did not do what you could do."

Maybe not everyone can do the immensity, but everyone in his place did.

In any case, we in the government worked as one team for wear and tear.

As one team.

- You have named the key figures.

You said: "I am the head of the federal operational headquarters, Sobyanin is the head of the working group of the State Council."

It is also unclear if you are duplicate organizations?

What was the Ministry of Health doing at that moment?

In this whole epidemic, the faces of the Ministry of Health have never been seen.

- Why?

- I have never seen.

- I would not say.

First, in fact, they had organized ... We have a multi-level system of these headquarters.

It goes straight to the municipality.

Each, according to his competence, organizes work not only on the basis of some federal decisions, but also from those decisions that are in the region, depending on the epidemiological situation.

They organized the retraining of specialists.

They were engaged in the organization of bed capacity in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

At the moment, 10 guidelines of the Ministry of Health have already been released on how to treat COVID-19.

Teams of medical specialists, led by specialists from the Ministry of Health and leading federal institutions, traveled all over the country in order to put their hands on, teach, explain, show how to lead patients - this is their current job.

Maybe this is good, if you didn't notice, but everything went on, it means that they were working.

This is how I appreciate it.

- Just not doing PR?

- Yes.

- Or maybe it was necessary to engage in PR?

What do you think?

Generally be open.

- PR and openness are different things.

PR on something is one story, but being open, talking about what you are doing is another.

That's how I feel about it.

And I think they always talked about it.

In any case, not a single meeting took place without the report of Mikhail Albertovich Murashko as the Minister of Health on what they were doing, what happened in a week.

- Or maybe, instead of officials, doctors and scientists came to the fore?

- Of course, of course, of course.

- When do you think this will all end?

- Well, I already said that we are now proceeding from the fact that we will achieve 60 percent collective immunity by August.

It is clear that, most likely, there will be seasonality.

Now they are talking about it.

- Well, that is, in October will be?

- Yes.

But if we get used to it, and I really hope that we will, a certain number of people will get sick and get sick.

We do not yet see the need to vaccinate those who have been ill, although the Lancet published that there are, and we need to think about it, secondary cases of the disease, especially among citizens of 65 years of age and above, for obvious reasons, because, as a rule, they they already suffer from additional diseases, they no longer have the same immunity as in young people, they probably do not develop the very antibodies that should be produced, and there should be a special approach and special control to them.

In any case, we are now orienting the regions to ensure that they first of all vaccinate people after 60 years of age and pay close attention to them.

They were on self-isolation for a long time.

By the way, not all regions of the country have decided to lift restrictive measures from this age group.

We orient them to ensure that the lifting of restrictive measures occurs primarily where ...

- Have taken root.

- ... the level of vaccination has reached sufficient volume.

- That's what I'm talking about.

If you are not vaccinated, stay at home.

- Well, you are still radical, Anton.

- I'm radical, of course.

You have to take into account, so to speak, the interests of all citizens.

- Well, you will talk about how important it is, it is necessary.

- Yes.

Anti-vaccinators have already filed a lot of lawsuits against me.

Already lawsuits in the prosecutor's office, in the Investigative Committee, in the sense of a statement, yes.

- Well, here we are sitting together here vaccinated, without masks, we have such an opportunity.

Your entire film crew is unmasked.

- In masks, in masks, of course.

- Well, it means they are observing, because ...

- Yes, they do.

Not all are vaccinated, some have recovered, but some yes.

But everyone took PCR, of course, when they came to you.

Are there many people in the government vaccinated?

Is it somehow more or less obligatory for you or not?

- Not.

Also, voluntarily.

People, because they are faced with this ... Do you know what was the most difficult impression from April last year?

It’s not even that we don’t make it in time, but the most difficult impression - snow, some kind of dirty snow, April, it’s dark and there are many ambulances.

This is the hardest impression.

And when spring came, on May 11, we lifted the self-isolation regime, it became somehow the sun and so on, and it seemed that the world was somehow different.

We came out of this darkness and went to live a life more or less familiar to us, although November and December of this year showed that nothing had gone anywhere.

Here, it seems to me that it is very important that we have experienced this here, in the White House, and I do not want everyone to experience this, although it was difficult.