After an initial dose of skepticism about the Russian vaccine COVID-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci now admits that data on the Sputnik V injection leads him to believe that it is “quite effective”.
“I took a look at some of the reports. It looks very good, ”Fauci said on Monday on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, Bloomberg News reported.
In February, a study published in the British medical journal The Lancet found that Sputnik V is about 91 percent effective and appears to prevent serious cases of infection.
Concerns over the safety of two-dose inoculation have increased after Russia approved the jab in August 2020 – ahead of its Western competitors and before large-scale clinical trials began.
At the time, President Vladimir Putin said that one of his daughters had been vaccinated with him, although he had only been tested on several dozen people.
But Fauci expressed skepticism about the Russian shooting.
“I hope that the Russians have definitely proven definitively that the vaccine is safe and effective,” Fauci told ABC News at the time. “I seriously doubt they did that.”
In January, the United States Department of Health and Human Services said that its Office of Global Affairs sought to persuade Brazil not to allow Sputnik V – accusing Moscow of seeking to expand its influence in the Americas in “detriment of the security and protection of the United States “, according to Bloomberg.
In the new interview, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and scientific adviser to President Biden, said he did not have the opportunity to review a Chinese vaccine, but that it “can also be good”.
“But I believe that Russian is quite effective,” he said.
The Russian vaccine is similar to one being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
Both use a modified version of the adenovirus that causes the common cold to carry genes for the peak protein in the coronavirus to stimulate the body to react to a COVID-19 infection.
But, unlike the AstraZeneca vaccine, the Russian version uses a slightly different adenovirus for its second booster injection.
On Monday, AstraZeneca announced that test data from an American study on the vaccine shows that it is 79 percent effective.
She said her experts also did not identify safety concerns related to the vaccine, including a rare blood clot that has been identified in Europe.
The experts found no increased risk of clots among the more than 20,000 people who received at least one dose of the AstraZeneca injection.