A few days, Pfizer has revealed the first interim phase 3 results for any Covid-19 vaccine. And with this news, Russian authorities have also announced their vaccine candidate has shown promising results. And experts have stated that Russian data is showing encouraging results. They have also warned people that positively effective results are based on a deficient number while terming it a premature result.
The sputnik-V vaccine has entered its final stage trials, and researchers are saying that all data will finally be published in peer-reviewed journals. And the director of Gamaleya Center, Alexander Gintsburg, said that vaccinations on a massive scale would begin in Russia in the coming weeks.
Like many other states, Russia has also been working on its Covid-19 vaccine termed Sputnik V. It is the same vaccine that made international news a few months back when Russian President Vladimir Putin gave it regulatory approval. It was taken as a huge controversy as at that time; this vaccine didn’t even enter its final stage trials.
Sputnik V is a vaccine designed traditionally. It contains a harmless adenovirus to enable the immune system to recognize the protein SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells. And such a vaccine based on Adenovirus is not a new thing, as they have a safe history in treating illnesses.
There was a problem with being familiar with Adenovirus and the Adenovirus-based vaccine, as a lot of people’s immune system has already utilized it somehow. To cater to this concern, the Russian vaccine has been engineered with two different Adenoviruses. This way, if Adenovirus is familiar with a person’s body in the first shot, it won’t be in the second one.
National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Russia has offered up the first look at the data of phase 3 trials of Sputnik Vaccine. However, they have mentioned while 40,000 participants are a part of the ongoing trial, just 16,000 have reached far enough to be included in the analysis.
Researchers are claiming the Adenovirus present in the Sputnik V vaccine has shown 92 percent effective results. And this data is taken from twenty Covid affected individuals out of a cohort of 16,000 cases. Which to say might not be enough in comparison to analyze the data on a large scale. And rushing to distribute the vaccine based on these preliminary results might cause health issues.
However, taken on its merit of the preliminary results, the data seems to be a hopeful indication that various vaccines in their development stages might beat the virus effectively.
A researcher from Imperial College London, Charles Bangham, said these initial results had shown hope. However, the adenovirus-based vaccine comes with its due share of pros and cons.
One of the biggest plus sides of this vaccine is its easy distribution, as such adenovirus-based vaccine doesn’t require ultra cold-storage as it is needed to protect mRNA-based vaccines. The Russian vaccine is best suitable for low-developed countries that might not sustain the ultra-cold supply chain of the vaccine.
Gintsburg also mentioned that making the effective interim results public will help in mass vaccination in Russia in the following weeks. Sputnik V vaccine will soon be available for masses of the population worldwide, and the credit for that goes to the production scale-up at new manufacturing sites.
