“Sputnik V” Vaccine Found Over 90% Effective Against COVID-19
A Russian vaccine against COVID-19 — Gam-COVID-Vac (dubbed “Sputnik V”) — shows 92% efficacy in interim results from a phase 3 trial reported in The Lancet.
The two-dose vaccine uses replication-deficient adenoviruses to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 glycoprotein as the antigenic stimulus. Doses are administered at 21-day intervals, and the vaccine may be stored in normal freezers. The Moscow-based, placebo-controlled trial enlisted some 22,000 SARS-CoV-2–negative adults, about 20,000 of whom had no protocol violations and were included in the analysis.
Starting at day 21, the day of the booster shot, 0.1% of vaccine recipients were diagnosed with COVID-19, versus 1.3% of placebo recipients (16 of 15,000 vaccine recipients vs. 62 of 4900 placebo recipients).
The authors report that, since federal approval in August 2020, more than 2 million doses of Gam-COVID-Vac have been administered to the Russian public — largely to at-risk groups.