American infectious disease specialists have assessed the effectiveness of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. It is comparable in performance to Pfizer and Moderna, experts said. In their opinion, one of the advantages of the drug is its resistance to temperatures during transportation and storage.
American infectious disease specialists have assessed the effectiveness of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. It is comparable in performance to Pfizer and Moderna, experts said. In their opinion, one of the advantages of the drug is its resistance to temperatures during transportation and storage.
The Sputnik V vaccine has shown high efficiency without requiring ultra-low temperatures during transportation and storage, unlike other drugs. This is reported by TASS with reference to specialists from three US universities.
In the third phase of trials, Sputnik V was 91.6 percent effective, slightly less than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are around 95 percent effective, said Dean Winslow, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University Medical Center.
The Russian vaccine does not require freezing temperatures for storage, since it is not an RNA, but a DNA preparation. Daniel Kuritskis, head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Harvard School of Medicine, noted that Sputnik V can be stored in an ordinary refrigerator.
“This means it is much easier to apply in some countries,” he added.
According to Roger MacArthur, an infectious disease specialist at Georgia State University, the resistance of the Russian vaccine to temperatures above 0 degrees is certainly an advantage.
“However, I think the most important thing in a vaccine is efficacy and safety,” added MacArthur.
Kuritskis noted that the Russian drug is superior to AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines in terms of effectiveness. In the future, Sputnik V will help defeat the coronavirus pandemic, he added.
Winslow emphasized that additional testing of Sputnik V is needed to build confidence in the vaccine.
On February 4, the German newspaper Welt published an article in which the Sputnik V vaccine was compared with the Soviet Sputnik 1, which the USSR launched into space in 1957. The newspaper notes that the publication of the drug in The Lancet has proven the drug’s high efficacy. This justifies Russia’s decision to start using vaccines pending the release of the final data on it.
According to an article in The Lancet, summarizing the results of Phase III clinical trials of “Sputnik V”, the effectiveness of the vaccine was 91.6%. More than 98% of the volunteers developed a humoral immune response, 100% – a cellular immune response.
Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, Australian virologist Peter Doherty says Sputnik V’s performance “looks great.”
Melita Vujnovich, the representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Russia, said in turn that an article in The Lancet confirms the claims about the effectiveness of “Sputnik V”. The head of the Russian Ministry of Health, Mikhail Murashko, said that the publication about the vaccine shows that there is a global interest in the Russian drug.
The minister also added that Russians have the opportunity to get vaccinated with one of the best drugs for coronavirus. On December 30, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said that both Russian vaccines – Sputnik V and EpiVacCorona – are good, although they have differences. According to her, Sputnik V is a little more reactogenic, but both drugs have no serious side effects and work perfectly. Golikova stressed that Russian vaccines have not yet shown themselves negatively.
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