Foreign experts assess benefits of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine

2024-04-24 12:36:24 Health and Fitness

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The Gamaleya National Research Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, Russia?s sovereign wealth fund) announced that the Sputnik V vaccine demonstrated efficacy of 97.6%, based on the analysis of data on the infection rate of coronavirus among those in Russia vaccinated with both components of Sputnik V.

?The Ministry of Health of Russia maintains a register of persons who have been vaccinated, as well as citizens who have got infected with COVID as part of the Unified State Information System in Healthcare. According to the data from 3.8 million Russians vaccinated with both components of Sputnik V from December 5, 2020 to March 31, 2021 as part of the mass-scale civil vaccination program, the infection rate starting from the 35th day from the date of the first injection was only 0.027%. At the same time, the incidence among the unvaccinated adult population was 1.1% for a comparable period starting from the 35th day after the launch of mass-scale vaccination in Russia,? says the message posted on the official website of the Sputnik V vaccine.

It is expected that the data and calculations of the vaccine?s efficacy will be published in a peer-reviewed medical journal in May.

Sputnik V is approved for use in 60 countries with a total population of 3 billion people. It ranks second among coronavirus vaccines globally in terms of the number of approvals issued by government regulators.

Sputnik V has been approved in Russia, Belarus, Argentina, Bolivia, Serbia, Algeria, Palestine, Venezuela, Paraguay, Turkmenistan, Hungary, UAE, Iran, Republic of Guinea, Tunisia, Armenia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Republika Srpska (entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Lebanon, Myanmar, Pakistan, Mongolia, Bahrain, Montenegro, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Gabon, San-Marino, Ghana, Syria, Kyrgyzstan, Guyana, Egypt, Honduras, Guatemala, Moldova, Slovakia, Angola, Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Sri Lanka, Laos, Iraq, North Macedonia, Kenya, Morocco, Jordan, Namibia, Azerbaijan, Philippines, Cameroon, Seychelles, Mauritius, Vietnam, Antigua and Barbuda, Mali, Panama and India.

As noted by the media, earlier Russian Sputnik V was the third in the list of vaccines with the highest level of effectiveness against coronavirus infection. For Moderna, it is 94.1%, while Pfizer/BioNTech initially had this figure at 95%, but in early April, the developer announced its decrease to 91.3%. Thus, the Russian vaccine now ranks first in terms of effectiveness.

According to Alexander Gintsburg, Director of the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, the actual efficacy of the Sputnik V vaccine may be even higher than the results of the analysis demonstrate, since ?the data on the case registration system allows a time lag between the collection of the sample (the actual date of the disease) and the diagnosis.?

The Sputnik V vaccine is based on a proven and well-studied platform of human adenoviral vectors. The safety, efficacy and lack of negative long-term effects of adenoviral vaccines have been proven by more than 250 clinical studies over two decades. Moreover, the storage temperature of Sputnik V allows storing it in a conventional refrigerator without any need to invest in additional cold-chain infrastructure. There are no strong allergies caused by Sputnik V. The price of Sputnik V is less than $10 per shot, making it affordable around the world.

Assessing the benefits of the Sputnik V vaccine, Muhammad Munir, Lecturer in Molecular Virology, Lancaster University, noted the presence of two different adenoviral vectors in the Russian vaccine ? rAd26 and rAd5.

?One of the unique features of Sputnik V is use of two vectors for the delivery of antigen. The first dose primes the immune system and raise substantial antibodies whereas second dose induce the immune system to produce long lasting antibodies and T-cells without being neutralized by the first dose,? the expert told PenzaNews.

According to him, this feature makes Sputnik V better and different compared to AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) which uses single vector for both injections.

?Realizing this advantage, AstraZeneca partnered with Sputnik V to conduct mutual trial which could enhance the performance of AstraZeneca. Based on the published data, Sputnik V outperformed many of the vaccines of similar kind,? Muhammad Munir stressed.

Jacob Koshy, Deputy Science Editor, The Hindu, expressed the opinion that the main advantage of Sputnik V for India is the already established cooperation of vaccine manufacturers with at least five Indian pharmaceutical companies.

?So the hope is that anywhere between 300?600 million doses will be quickly available to India within months. Sputnik V has tied up with Dr. Reddy?s Labs and conducted a phase 2/3 adaptive study. The results of this aren?t in public domain but one hopes that this information is with India?s regulators and they have made a good judgement,? Jacob Koshy said.

Read more: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/67088-2021