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for political purposes,” the official communiqué said.
“We will toughen sanctions on individuals who are involved in this human trafficking, and we will have to talk about the fact that severe economic sanctions are inevitable ... We will have to tackle the airlines, too,” Germany’s EU Minister Haiko Maas told reporters, according to Reuters.
Diplomats are also reportedly discussing tightening economic sanctions against Belarus by extending restrictions that already target the tobacco and potash industries.
Brussels announced new sanctions just as a new
President Lukashenko has vowed to retaliate. “They’re scaring us with sanctions,” he told officials on Monday. “We will defend ourselves. We can not retreat.”
At the same time, Lukashenka seemed to have hinted at a possible winding down of the crisis.
Lukashenka said that Belarus “was working on repatriating the migrants, mostly from the Middle East, who are stuck at Belarus's border with EU member Poland,” AFP wrote based on a report by the Belarusian state-owned newswire Belta.
"Active work is underway in this area, to convince people – please, return home. But nobody wants to go back," Lukashenka said in what may be seen as a pretext to keep the crisis going.
The influx of new migrants at the border may at least stop or lessen for now after the Belarusian state airline Belavia said that – on request by Turkey – it would stop boarding citizens of Iraq, Syria, and Yemen on flights along the Turkey-Belarus route. The EU also pushed Turkish Airlines and Russia’s Aeroflot to do the same.
Iraq said it would launch a “voluntary” repatriation flight for its citizens currently stuck at the Belarusian-Polish border, Politico Europe reported.
UK medical journal The Lancet publishes study, finds the one-shot Sputnik Light vaccine safe and effective
bne IntelliNews
Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) announced the release of the results of a study by the vaccine’s inventor Gamaleya Center in the prestigious UK medical journal The Lancet that found the one-shot Sputnik Light vaccine against coronavirus has a high safety profile and induces a strong humoral and cellular immune response, the RDIF said in a press release on November 3.
Most of the solicited adverse reactions observed during the study were mild or moderate. No serious adverse events were detected, the study found.
“One-shot Sputnik Light is a highly effective vaccine when used both on a standalone basis and applied as a booster. Sputnik Light has been authorized in more than 15 countries with the registration process ongoing in a further 30 countries,” the RDIF said that funded the development of the vaccine.
The earlier findings by the Gamaleya Center based on data from 28,000 subjects in Moscow have demonstrated the Sputnik Light vaccine administered standalone has 70% efficacy against infection from the Delta variant of coronavirus during the first three months after vaccination. The vaccine is 75% effective among subjects under the age of 60.
Efficacy of one-shot Sputnik Light as a booster against Delta variant for other vaccines will be close to the efficacy against the Delta variant of Russia’s flagship Sputnik V vaccine: over 83% against infection and over 94% against hospitalization.
Sputnik Light has demonstrated superior efficacy compared with some two-shot vaccines, which have shown a major decline in efficacy against the Delta variant to less than 50% five months after injection, the RDIF claimed. Standalone use of Sputnik Light also provides much higher efficacy against severe disease and hospitalizations.
The vaccine has demonstrated efficacy of between 78.6-83.7% among the elderly as confirmed by the Ministry of Health of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the study found.
Paraguay’s Ministry of Health found Sputnik Light to be 93.5% effective during the country’s ongoing vaccination campaign.
The Sputnik Light vaccine is currently being tested as a booster shot in a number of clinical trials around the world. In particular, a combination of AstraZeneca/Sputnik Light showed higher immunogenicity levels than the original AstraZeneca vaccine.
RDIF and the Ministry of Health of Argentina are co-sponsoring the first multi vaccine combination trial targeting 2,800 subjects (560 in each of the 5 provinces: City and Province of Buenos Aires, as well as Córdoba, La Rioja and San Luis).
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