MOSCOW (AP) – Russian scientists say the country’s Sputnik V vaccine appears to be safe and effective against COVID-19, according to early results from an advanced study published Tuesday in a British medical journal.
The news is a boost for the vaccine, which governments around the world are increasingly buying in the race to stop the devastation from the coronavirus pandemic.
Researchers said that based on a drop trial involving about 20,000 people in Russia, the vaccine is about 91% effective and appears to prevent inoculated individuals from becoming seriously ill with COVID-19. But it is unclear whether the Sputnik V can stop the broadcast. The study was published online Tuesday in The Lancet.
Scientists not involved in the study acknowledged that the speed at which the vaccine was made and rolled out criticized the “inappropriate haste, cutting corners and lack of transparency” of the Russian effort.
“But the outcome reported here is clear,” British scientists Ian Jones and Polly Roy wrote in an accompanying commentary. “Another vaccine can now join the fight to reduce the incidence of COVID-19.”
The vaccine was approved with much fanfare by the Russian government on August 11. President Vladimir Putin personally announced the news on national television, saying that one of his daughters had already received it. At the time, the vaccine had only been tested on a few dozen people and the move drew criticism from experts at home and abroad.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that financed the development of the shot, called the research in The Lancet “check and mate to the critics of the Russian vaccine.”
“Russia was right from the start,” he said.
Outside of Russia, Sputnik V has been authorized in more than a dozen countries, including the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Armenia and Turkmenistan, according to the fund; Latin American countries, including Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela; African countries such as Algeria, as well as Serbia, Iran, Palestine and the UAE.
Batches of the vaccine have already been supplied to six countries. In total, more than 50 countries have submitted applications for 2.4 billion doses, an RDIF spokesperson told The Associated Press.
The latest study is based on research involving about 20,000 people over 18 years old in 25 hospitals in Moscow between September and November, three-quarters of whom received two doses of the Russian vaccine 21 days apart and the rest received placebo injections.
Serious side effects were reported rarely in both groups and four deaths were reported, although none were considered to be due to the vaccine.
The study involved more than 2,100 people over the age of 60 and the vaccine was found to be about 92% effective in them. The research is ongoing, but Russia’s Health Ministry said in December that it was reducing the size of the study from its planned 40,000 subjects to about 31,000 already enrolled volunteers, with the developers citing ethical concerns about the use of placebo injections.
The Russian vaccine uses a modified version of the adenovirus that causes the common cold to carry genes for the spike protein in the coronavirus as a way to excite the body to respond when COVID-19 comes along. This is a technology similar to the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. But unlike the vaccine with two doses of AstraZeneca, the Russians used a slightly different adenovirus for the second booster shot.
“This aims to stimulate a higher immune response to the target’s ‘peak’ by using two slightly different jabs,” said Alexander Edwards, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the British University of Reading, who was not affiliated with it. Russian research. He said that if you have two identical injections, the immune system may not get that big of a boost from the second injection.
Roy, a professor of virology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said there should be no more doubt about the Russian vaccine. She said the high level of antibodies produced by Sputnik V suggests it could also protect against some of the new COVID-19 variants detected recently, but more studies are needed to verify that.
“At first I was concerned about what they were saying and thought they were getting too much publicity, but the data is now very strong,” said Roy.
Sputnik V was rolled out in a large-scale vaccination campaign in Russia in December, with doctors and teachers first in line. Last month, Putin ordered mass immunizations to start.
In early January, the Russian Direct Investment Fund said more than 1 million Russians had already been vaccinated. Some Russian media questioned the number, suggesting that the rollout had been much slower, with many Russian regions reporting small numbers of vaccinations.
Sputnik V production will span several countries including India, South Korea, Brazil and China. “We will also produce vaccines in Kazakhstan, develop (production) in Belarus, in Turkey and possibly even in Iran,” said Dmitriev, adding that production in China will start at the end of the month.
Algeria will begin production of the Sputnik V vaccine “in the coming weeks,” Kamel Mansouri, the head of Algeria’s national drug agency, said 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 the data they would need to submit to license the vaccine in the 27 countries of the European Union.
Hungary’s first shipment of Sputnik V – 40,000 doses – arrived Tuesday, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook. Hungary expects to receive enough Sputnik V vaccine in the next three months to treat 1 million people.
Hungarian health authorities were the first in the EU to approve the vaccine on January 21, but the National Public Health Center still has to give its final approval before the injections are distributed to the public.
The minister took the opportunity to initiate the introduction of vaccinations by the EU itself, which has been much slower than those in Israel, Great Britain or the United States.
“The centralized procurement of vaccines in Brussels has been a failure, causing the lives of Europeans and the fastest restart of the European economy,” said Szijjarto.
“We were the first, but we probably won’t be the only ones” in the EU considering the use of Russian and Chinese COVID-19 vaccines, he added.
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Maria Cheng reported from Toronto. Associated Press writers, Aomar Ouali in Algiers, Algeria, Lori Hinnant in Paris, and Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, contributed.
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