Russia’s Sputnik vaccine is causing political chaos in Central Europe

A joke is doing the rounds in the Czech Republic that the world’s highest Covid mortality rate can, in actual fact, be found in the Czech Ministry of Health. Yesterday, the Czech health minister Jan Blatný was dismissed, the nation’s third ‘Covid Health Minister’ since the pandemic began. Both his predecessors were sacked by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in the autumn of 2020.

Rumours of Blatný’s departure had been in the wind for weeks. But his fall from favour seems to have little to do with the Czech Republic’s inability to contain the spread of Covid-19, and far more to do with the ongoing controversy over whether the country will join regional allies Slovakia and Hungary in buying the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

Blatný was engaged in a continuous tussle with the Czech Republic’s Eurosceptic, pro-Russia and pro-China President Miloš Zeman over the potential procurement of Sputnik V. The outgoing health minister represented the views of a large proportion of Czech epidemiologists and health experts who are worried about the use of non-EMA approved vaccines.