Russia says its Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 is 95% effective

Russia said Tuesday that its Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, developed by the Gamaleya research center in Moscow, is 95% effective.

These are preliminary results obtained with volunteers 42 days after the injection of the first dose, indicated in a joint statement from the center, the Russian Ministry of Health and the Russian Sovereign Fund involved in the development of the vaccine.

The price of a dose of Sputnik V in the international market will be less than 10 dollars, the Russian Sovereign Fund announced in a separate statement, while for Russian citizens the vaccine will be free.

The Sputnik V vaccine is currently in phase 3 of double-blind, randomized clinical trials with about 40,000 volunteers.

The vaccine creators reiterated Tuesday that the research data will be published shortly in one of the world's leading peer-reviewed medical journals.

It is a vaccine based on the "viral vector", which uses two injections of two adenoviruses (a very common type of virus that causes colds) modified with a part of the virus responsible for Covid-19.

When the modified adenovirus enters the cells of vaccinated people, they make a typical SARS-CoV-2 protein, allowing the immune system to recognize the virus and fight it, as explained by the Gamaleya center.

Competition is fierce to develop a vaccine to curb the coronavirus pandemic that has plagued the world since the beginning of the year.

The British laboratory AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford published Monday that their vaccine had an average effectiveness of 70%.

For its part, the vaccine developed between Pfizer and BioNTech is 95% effective, according to the complete results of its large-scale clinical trial, which were released last week. The American company Moderna announced similar results (94.5% effective).

Russia is ready to fight to lead the vaccine race and, already in August it announced that Sputnik V was very effective.

The topic of vaccination divides opinions. Some believe that it is the path back the normality before covid-19, others are highly skeptical that the vaccines have been developed in such rush, and doubt that the testing and trials would be sufficient to provide their safety to humans.

MOCTEN

 

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