MOSCOW (AP) – Russian scientists say the country’s Sputnik V vaccine appears safe and effective against COVID-19, according to the first results of an advanced study published Tuesday in a British medical journal.
The news is a boost to the vaccine, which more and more governments around the world are buying in the race to contain the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The researchers said that, based on an autumn study involving some 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 not clear whether Sputnik V can interrupt the transmission. The study was published online on Tuesday in The Lancet.
Scientists not linked to the research recognized that the speed with which the vaccine was made and launched brought criticism to the “indecorous haste, reduced corners and lack of transparency” of the Russian effort.
“But the result reported here is clear,” wrote British scientists Ian Jones and Polly Roy in an accompanying commentary. “Another vaccine can now join the fight to reduce the incidence of COVID-19.”
The vaccine was approved by the Russian government with great fanfare on August 11. President Vladimir Putin personally broke the news on national television and said that one of his daughters had already received it. At the time, the vaccine had only been tested on several dozen people, and the action drew criticism from experts at home and abroad.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that financed the development of the vaccine, called The Lancet’s study “to check and mate with critics of the Russian vaccine”.
“Russia was right from the start,” he said.
Outside 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 like Algeria, as well as Serbia, Iran, Palestine and the United Arab Emirates.
Lots of the vaccine have already been supplied to six countries. In all, more than 50 countries have submitted orders for 2.4 billion doses, an RDIF spokesman told the Associated Press.
The latest study is based on research involving some 20,000 people over the age of 18 in 25 hospitals in Moscow between September and November, of which three-quarters received two doses of the Russian vaccine 21 days apart and the rest received placebo injections.
Serious side effects have been reported rare in both groups and four deaths have been reported, although none have been considered as a 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 in them. The research is ongoing, but the Russian Ministry of Health said in December that it was reducing the study size from 40,000 planned individuals to about 31,000 volunteers already enrolled, with 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 peak protein in the coronavirus as a way to prepare the body to react if COVID-19 appears. It is a technology similar to the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. But unlike AstraZeneca’s two-dose vaccine, the Russians used a slightly different adenovirus for the second booster injection.
“The goal is to generate higher immune responses to the target ‘peak’ using two slightly different jabs,” said Alexander Edwards, an associate professor of biomedical technology at the University of Reading in Britain, who was not connected to Russian research. He said that if you take two identical injections, it is possible that the immune system will not get such a boost with the second injection.
Roy, professor of virology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said there should be no more doubts about the Russian vaccine. She said the high level of antibodies produced by Sputnik V suggests that it can also protect against some of the new variants of COVID-19 that have been detected recently, but further studies are needed to verify this.
“Initially, I was concerned about what they were saying and I thought they were getting a lot of publicity, but the data is now very strong,” said Roy.
Sputnik V was launched in a large-scale vaccination campaign in Russia in December, with doctors and teachers as the first in line. Last month, Putin ordered the start of mass immunization.
In early January, the Russian Direct Investment Fund said more than 1 million Russians had already been vaccinated. Some Russian media have questioned the number, suggesting that the launch was much slower, with many Russian regions reporting a small number of vaccinations.
The production of Sputnik V will cover several countries, including India, South Korea, Brazil, China. “We will also manufacture vaccines in Kazakhstan, we will develop (production) in Belarus, Turkey and possibly even Iran,” said Dmitriev, adding that production in China will begin later this month.
Algeria will begin producing the Sputnik V vaccine “in the coming weeks,” said Kamel Mansouri, head of Algeria’s national pharmaceuticals agency, on Tuesday. The first batch of 50,000 doses arrived in Algeria last week.
The European Medicines Agency said that the developers of Sputnik V recently asked for advice on what data they needed to send in order for the vaccine to be licensed in the 27 nations of the European Union.
The first shipment of Sputnik V from 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 officials were the first in the EU to approve the vaccine on January 21, but the National Center for Public Health must still give its final approval before the vaccines are distributed to the public.
The minister took the opportunity to talk about the implementation of the EU’s own vaccination, which has been much slower than in Israel, Britain or the United States.
“The centralized acquisition of vaccines in Brussels was a failure, which risked the lives of Europeans and the faster restart of the European economy,” said Szijjarto.
“We were the first, but we probably won’t be the only ones” in the EU to consider the use of COVID-19 vaccines from Russia and China, 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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