SPUTNIK V 97.6% EFFECTIVE AGAINST COVID-19: RUSSIA

Assessment based on data from 3.8 million people

Russian scientists have found the Sputnik V vaccine 97.6 per cent effective against Covid-19 in a “real-world” assessment based on data from 3.8 million people, Moscow's Gamaleya Institute and the Russian Direct Investment Fund said on Monday.

The new effectiveness rate is higher than the 91.6 per cent rate outlined in results from a large-scale trial of Sputnik V that was published in The Lancet medical journal earlier this year, and compares favourably with data on the effectiveness of other Covid vaccines.

The new data was based on 3.8 million Russians who received both a first shot and a booster shot as part of the national roll-out of Sputnik V.

“This data confirms that Sputnik V demonstrates one of the best protection rates against coronavirus among all vaccines,” said Kirill Dmitriev, head of the RDIF sovereign wealth fund which is backing the vaccine. The incidence of infection was calculated from the 35th day from the first injection, the statement said, showing an incidence rate of 0.027 per cent. The incidence of infection among unvaccinated adults during a considerable period following the launch of mass vaccination in Russia was 1.1 per cent, it said, without specifying the date range used. The new data will be published in a peerreviewed medical journal next month.

The data was collated from a database kept by the health ministry that registers vaccinated people, as well as a separate database of people who were infected with Covid-19 in the country.

More people were diagnosed with Covid19 during the past seven days than any other week since the start of the pandemic — topping 5.2 million globally — with the worst outbreaks accelerating in many countries that are ill-equipped to deal with them.

The worrisome trend, just days after the world surpassed 3 million deaths, comes as countries are rolling out vaccinations in an effort to get the virus under control. The data from Johns Hopkins University showing a 12 per cent increase in infections from a week earlier casts doubt on the hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight.

The weekly increase surpassed the previous high set in mid-december. While infection rates have largely slowed in the US and UK, countries in the developing world — India and Brazil in particular — are shouldering surging caseloads. Fatalities have increased for the past month and were about 82,000 the week ended April 18, an average of almost 12,000 a day.