British counterintelligence told the government that it has evidence that a Russian spy personally stole from AstraZeneca a formulation of the COVID-19 vaccine that was used to create the Sputnik V vaccine in Russia, The Sun reported Monday.
As “Solntse” reminds, last year counterintelligence said that “more than 95 percent.” I am sure that hackers acting on behalf of the Russian authorities tried to steal from the British, American and Canadian laboratories the formulas for the COVID-19 vaccines that were being developed at the time.
However, counterintelligence agents are now confident that a Russian spy physically stole the vaccine formula from AstraZeneca. Another newspaper, the Daily Mail, adds that it is not only clear whether the spy took the documents or a bottle of the finished product, which was then smuggled into Russia and copied there.
Both newspapers note that the Sputnik V vaccine technology is very similar to the technology used by AstraZeneca and the timing of the announcement that the UK has begun human testing and that Russia has announced the development of a vaccine.
On April 23, 2020, researchers at the University of Oxford announced that they would begin testing the vaccine, and a week later, research-backing company AstraZeneca will manufacture and distribute it if the tests are successful. Meanwhile, in May, the Russian Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology announced the invention of a vaccine, and on August 11, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was the first in the world to create an effective vaccine against Covid-19. According to the Daily Mail, this suggests that the vaccine formula was stolen during the first human trials. AstraZeneca was approved for use in the UK on December 30th.
UK Deputy Home Secretary Damian Hinds said on Monday that he could not comment on the matter, but did not deny media reports and said: scientific and intellectual property “.