LONDON: A Russian campaign of disinformation to discredit the Oxford University Covid-19 vaccine in India has been exposed by a whistleblower, according to a UK newspaper.
The Times (UK) says it has uncovered evidence that elements of the Russian state are behind a campaign aiming to undermine the Oxford vaccine, being manufactured at the Serum Institute in Pune, in order to secure a market for Russia’s vaccine Sputnik V.
The campaign involves a chain of people across the world planting images, memes and videos on social media that say the vaccine “turns you into a monkey” because it uses a chimpanzee virus as a vector, contrasting it with the Russian vaccine derived from a human adenovirus, the British newspaper said. It targets a dozen countries where Russia is trying to market its own vaccine, including India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Brazil.
“These are countries where the information systems are quite weak and rumours spread rapidly. Back in the ’80s, when the KGB was trying to spread a quite false idea that the CIA had invented the HIV virus, they started off doing that in India and it spread around the world and ended up being something that was widely believed in the US, so it is probably the place to start,” expert on Russian espionage Edward Lucas told Times Radio (UK).
The people spreading the images online “have been told to make to make it look like young activists in India who might have their own reasons to oppose a Western vaccine are behind the campaign”, Times Radio reported.
Images from the campaign show a chimpanzee in an AstraZeneca lab coat clutching an injection; queues of people going into a tent marked AstraZeneca coming out as a line of monkeys; a yeti in a suit with a mop of blond hair walking down Whitehall clutching a folder saying “AstraZeneca” which reads “I like my Bigfoot vaccine”, and King Kong brandishing a giant injection with the words “For the monkey vaccine.”
The Russian embassy in the UK said: “The suggestion that the Russian state may conduct any kind of propaganda against the AstraZeneca vaccine is itself an example of disinformation. It is obviously aimed at discrediting Russia’s efforts in combating the pandemic.”
Chimpanzee adenoviral vectors are a very well-studied vaccine type that were used in the ebola and MERS-CoV vaccines. “There are many chimpanzee common cold viruses which have been tested as vaccines over the last few decades so we have a huge understanding and knowledge about their safety, “ said Dr Andrew Pollard, chief investigator of the Oxford vaccine trials. “If you use human common cold viruses, it means it’s much harder to get strong immune responses because our immune system immediately recognises the human common cold virus and kills it.”
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said: “Misinformation is a clear risk to public health. I urge everyone to use reliable sources of information.”