Study: Russian vaccine appears safe, effective
MOSCOW – Russian scientists say the country’s Sputnik V vaccine appears safe and effective against COVID-19, according to early results of an advanced study published Tuesday in a British medical journal.
The news is a boost for the vaccine, which governments around the world increasingly are purchasing in the race to stop the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Researchers said that based on a fall trial involving about 20,000 people in Russia, the vaccine is about 91% effective and appears to prevent inoculated individuals from becoming severely ill with COVID-19. But it is unclear if Sputnik V can stop transmission. The study was published online Tuesday in The Lancet.
Scientists not linked to the research acknowledged that the speed at which the vaccine was made and rolled out had brought criticism of the Russian effort’s “unseemly haste, corner-cutting and an absence of transparency.”
“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 by the Russian government with much fanfare on Aug. 11. President Vladimir Putin personally broke the news on national television and said one of his daughters had already received it. At the time, the vaccine had only been tested in several dozen people, and the move elicited criticism from experts both at home and abroad.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolled the development of the shot, called the study in The Lancet “check and mate to the critics of the Russian vaccine.”
“Russia was right from the very beginning,” he said.
Outside Russia, Sputnik V has received authorization in over 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 such as Algeria as well as Serbia, Iran, Palestine and United Arab Emirates.
Batches of the vaccine have already been supplied to six countries. In all, more than 50 countries have submitted applications for 2.4 billion doses, an RDIF spokesman said.
The latest study is based on research involving about 20,000 people over 18 at 25 hospitals in Moscow between September and November, of whom three-quarters got two doses of the Russian vaccine 21 days apart and the remainder got placebo shots.
Serious side effects were reported to be rare in both groups and four deaths were reported, although none were considered to be the result of the vaccine.
The study included more than 2,100 people over age 60, and the vaccine appeared to be about 92% effective in them. The research is ongoing, but Russia’s Health Ministry said in December it was cutting the size of the study from the planned 40,000 subjects to about 31,000 already enrolled volunteers, with developers citing ethical concerns about using placebo shots.