By DARIA LITVI­NO­VA-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

MOSCOW (AP) — Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin said Wednes­day he has tak­en an ex­per­i­men­tal nasal vac­cine against the coro­n­avirus, three days af­ter he re­ceived his boost­er shot.

Rus­sia is fac­ing its worst surge of in­fec­tions and deaths since the pan­dem­ic be­gan and is strug­gling to over­come wide­spread vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy.

Putin was vac­ci­nat­ed with Sput­nik V, Rus­sia’s do­mes­ti­cal­ly de­vel­oped COVID-19 vac­cine, in the spring. On Sun­day, he said he re­ceived a boost­er shot of Sput­nik Light, the one-dose ver­sion of the jab, and said he want­ed to take part in test­ing the nasal ver­sion of Sput­nik V.

De­nis Lo­gunov, deputy di­rec­tor of Rus­sia’s state-fund­ed Gama­leya Cen­ter that de­vel­oped Sput­nik V, told Putin on Sun­day the nasal vac­cine is yet to go through clin­i­cal stud­ies and is cur­rent­ly be­ing test­ed “off-la­bel most­ly” — on the cen­ter’s staff mem­bers.

In ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished sci­en­tif­ic pro­to­cols, the vac­cine will need to go through sev­er­al tri­al phas­es, in­clud­ing those in­volv­ing thou­sands of peo­ple, to es­tab­lish that it is safe and ef­fec­tive to use.

Last month, Rus­sia’s Health Min­istry gave a reg­u­la­to­ry go-ahead to ear­ly tri­als of the nasal form of Sput­nik V among 500 vol­un­teers, but it was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether it has al­ready start­ed.

Putin told a gov­ern­ment meet­ing Wednes­day that “ex­act­ly six months af­ter vac­ci­na­tion my titers of pro­tec­tive (an­ti­bod­ies) have dropped, and spe­cial­ists rec­om­mend­ed the pro­ce­dure of re­vac­ci­na­tion, which I did.”

He said he didn’t ex­pe­ri­ence any un­pleas­ant ef­fects af­ter tak­ing the nasal vac­cine.

In re­cent weeks, Rus­sia has been swept by its high­est ever COVID-19 surge, with of­fi­cials reg­u­lar­ly reg­is­ter­ing record-high num­bers of new in­fec­tions and deaths.

The surge came amid low vac­ci­na­tion rates and lax pub­lic at­ti­tudes to­ward tak­ing pre­cau­tions. Few­er than 40% of Rus­sia’s near­ly 146 mil­lion peo­ple have been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, even though the coun­try ap­proved a do­mes­ti­cal­ly de­vel­oped COVID-19 vac­cine months be­fore most of the world.

Rus­sians are cur­rent­ly of­fered four do­mes­ti­cal­ly de­vel­oped vac­cines, with Sput­nik V and Sput­nik Light dom­i­nat­ing the mar­ket. Da­ta on ef­fi­ca­cy of two oth­er ones, Epi­Vac­Coro­na and Co­vi­Vac, is yet to be re­leased; just like Sput­nik V, these two shots have been giv­en reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval be­fore com­plet­ing late-stage tri­als nec­es­sary to es­tab­lish their ef­fec­tive­ness in pre­vent­ing dis­ease.

Rus­sia’s Health Min­istry is ex­pect­ed to ap­prove a ver­sion of Sput­nik V for teenagers aged 12 to 17 on Wednes­day, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Tatyana Go­liko­va told Putin dur­ing the gov­ern­ment meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the Rus­sia’s state reg­istry of clin­i­cal tri­als, the jab, which is in essence a small­er dose of Sput­nik V, was be­ing test­ed on more than 3,600 vol­un­teers. No da­ta on its ef­fi­ca­cy has been re­leased yet.

The im­mu­niza­tion dri­ve in Rus­sia has been ham­pered by wide­spread vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy. A poll re­leased by the in­de­pen­dent poll­ster Lev­a­da Cen­ter ear­li­er this month showed that 45% of Rus­sians weren’t will­ing to get do­mes­ti­cal­ly de­vel­oped shots.

In an ef­fort to boost vac­cine up­take, doc­tors from 11 Russ­ian hos­pi­tals re­leased an open let­ter Wednes­day, invit­ing those skep­ti­cal of vac­cines — and a num­ber of promi­nent pub­lic fig­ures in par­tic­u­lar who are known to air their skep­ti­cism in pub­lic — to vis­it coro­n­avirus wards and in­ten­sive care units with COVID-19 pa­tients.

“Maybe af­ter that you’ll change your mind and few­er peo­ple will be dy­ing,” the let­ter read.

Rus­sia’s state coro­n­avirus task force re­port­ed 33,558 new in­fec­tions on Wednes­day and 1,240 deaths. Go­liko­va called the dai­ly mor­tal­i­ty num­bers “dra­mat­ic,” not­ing at the same time that con­ta­gions in the coun­try have tak­en a down­ward trend.

In to­tal, the task force has re­port­ed over 9.4 mil­lion con­firmed in­fec­tions and more than 267,000 COVID-19 deaths, by far the high­est death toll in Eu­rope. Some ex­perts be­lieve the true fig­ure is even high­er.

Re­ports by Rus­sia’s sta­tis­ti­cal ser­vice, Ros­stat, that tal­ly coro­n­avirus-linked deaths retroac­tive­ly, re­veal much high­er mor­tal­i­ty. They say 462,000 peo­ple with COVID-19 died be­tween April 2020 and Sep­tem­ber of this year.

Russ­ian of­fi­cials have said the task force on­ly in­cludes deaths for which COVID-19 was the main cause, and us­es da­ta from med­ical fa­cil­i­ties. Ros­stat us­es wider cri­te­ria for count­ing virus-re­lat­ed deaths and takes its num­bers from civ­il reg­istry of­fices where reg­is­ter­ing a death is fi­nal­ized.