MOSCOW (AP) – Russian scientists say Sputnik V vaccine in the country seems safe and effective against COVID-19, according to first results of an advanced study published Tuesday in a British medical journal.
The news is a boost to the vaccine, which governments around the world are increasingly buying into the race to stop the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The researchers said that, based on a fall trial with approximately 20,000 people in Russia, the vaccine is about 91% effective and appears to prevent inoculated people from suffering from serious COVID-19 diseases. But it is unclear whether Sputnik V can stop the transmission. The study was published online Tuesday in The Lancet.
Scientists who were not linked to the research acknowledged that the speed with which the vaccine was developed and deployed had sparked criticism of the “undue rush, cut corners and lack of transparency” of the Russian effort.
“But the result described here is clear,” British scientists Ian Jones and Polly Roy wrote in an attached comment. “Another vaccine may now join the fight to reduce the incidence of COVID-19.”
The vaccine was approved by the Russian government with much resignation on 11 August. President Vladimir Putin personally broke the news on national television and said one of his daughters had already received it. At the time, the vaccine had only been tested on several dozen people and the move provoked criticism from both domestic and foreign experts.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that funded the development of the shot, described the study in The Lancet as “checking and matching critics of the Russian vaccine.”
“Russia was right from the start,” he said.
Outside of Russia, Sputnik V has received authorization in more than a dozen countries, according to the fund, including the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Armenia and Turkmenistan; Latin American nations, including Argentina, Bolivia, and Venezuela; African nations such as Algeria, as well as Serbia, Iran, Palestine and the United Arab Emirates.
Vaccine batches have already been supplied to six countries. In total, more than 50 countries have submitted requests for 2.4 billion doses, an RDIF spokesman told The Associated Press.
The latest study is based on research that included approximately 20,000 people over the age of 18 in 25 Moscow hospitals between September and November, three-quarters of whom received two doses of the Russian vaccine 21 days apart and the rest they received placebo shots.
Rare serious side effects were reported in both groups and four deaths were reported, although none were considered to be the result of the vaccine.
The study included more than 2,100 people over the age of 60 and the vaccine appeared to be about 92% effective. The investigation is ongoing, but Russia’s Ministry of Health said in December it was reducing the study size from the planned 40,000 subjects to about 31,000 volunteers already enrolled, and developers cited ethical concerns about the use of placebo shots. .
The Russian vaccine uses a modified version of the common adenovirus that causes colds to carry genes for the coronavirus ear protein as a way to prepare the body to react if COVID-19 appears. This is a vaccine-like technology developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. But unlike AstraZeneca’s two-dose vaccine, the Russians used a slightly different adenovirus for the second booster shot.
“This aims to boost higher immune responses to the‘ tip ’target by using two slightly different strokes,” said Alexander Edwards, an associate professor of biomedical technology at the University of Reading in Britain, who was not connected with Russian research. He said that if you have two identical traits, your immune system may not get such a big boost from the second injection.
Roy, a professor of virology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said there should no longer be any doubts about the Russian vaccine. He said the high level of antibodies produced by Sputnik V suggests that it could also be protected from some of the new variants of COVID-19 that have been detected recently, but more studies are needed to verify this.
“Initially, I had some concerns about what they were saying and thought they were getting too much publicity, but now the data is very strong,” Roy said.
Sputnik V was developed in a large-scale vaccination campaign in Russia in December, with doctors and teachers at the forefront. Last month, Putin ordered mass vaccinations to begin.
In early January, Russia’s Direct Investment Fund said more than a million Russians had already been vaccinated. Some Russian media questioned the number, suggesting that deployment had been much slower, and many Russian regions reported a small number of vaccinations.
Production of Sputnik V will be extended to several countries, including India, South Korea, Brazil and China. “We will also manufacture vaccines in Kazakhstan, develop (production) in Belarus, Turkey and possibly even Iran,” said Dmitriev, who added that production in China will begin later this month.
Algeria will begin producing the Sputnik V vaccine “in the coming weeks,” Kamel Mansouri, the head of Algeria’s national pharmaceutical agency, said on Tuesday. The first batch of 50,000 doses arrived in Algeria last week.
The European Medicines Agency said the developers of Sputnik V recently asked for advice on what data they had to submit to obtain the vaccine license in the European Union from 27 countries.
The first shipment of Sputnik V to Hungary (40,000 doses) arrived on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook. Hungary hopes to get enough Sputnik V vaccine to treat 1 million people in the next three months.
Hungarian health authorities were the first in the EU to approve the vaccine on January 21, but the National Center for Public Health has yet to give its final approval before distributing the shots to the public.
The minister took the opportunity to explode the launch of EU vaccinations, which have been much slower than those of Israel, Britain or the United States.
“Brussels’ centralized vaccine recruitment has been a failure that has risked the lives of Europeans and the faster restart of the European economy, ”Szijjarto said.
“We were the first, but probably not the only ones” in the EU to consider using Russian and Chinese COVID-19 vaccines, he added.
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Maria Cheng reported from Toronto. The writers of the Associated Press, Aomar Ouali in Algiers, Algeria, Lori Hinnant in Paris and Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, collaborated.
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