The United States announced last week that it will allow fully vaccinated foreign travelers from dozens of countries starting in November. However, the new rules appear to exclude many potential tourists who consider themselves fully immunized, including millions of people who have received two doses of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, according to the Washington Post.
The new U.S. plan requires that most international travelers seeking entry to the United States are fully vaccinated with shots approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the World Health Organization (WHO), according to the Post. This includes vaccines developed by Pfizer
However, Sputnik V, which was developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, has yet to be authorized for emergency use by the WHO. The global health agency has suspended its review of the vaccine back in June, citing concerns over manufacturing practices, according to Reuters.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which backed Sputnik V, said in a statement that not only has the vaccine "been approved in 70 countries where over 4 billion people, or over half of the world's population, live, but its efficacy and safety have been confirmed both during clinical trials and over the course of real-world use in a number of countries," the Post cites.
"We stand against attempts to politicize the global fight against COVID-19 and discriminate against effective vaccines for short-term political or economic gains," the statement added.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians can be affected by the new travel rules; roughly 300,000 Russians traveled to the U.S. back in 2019, according to the U.S. Travel Association, the Post reports. Outside of Russia, 448 million Sputnik V doses have been purchased worldwide, according to data from the Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University, the Post reports, meaning that potentially 224 million people could be affected by this travel ruling.
