russia may be vaccine undermine immunize

#Russia may be vaccine undermine immunize trial#
#Russia may be vaccine undermine immunize plus#

(As of May 2021, nearly 90% of those vaccinated there were with Sputnik.) These aren’t studies of equal weight in size or study design. The San Marino number must be small – it’s a microstate in Italy, with a population of less than 34,000 people.

The Swedish study is huge – over 1.6 million people, with a high proportion of Pfizer vaccinations, especially in those at high risk of Covid.

Here are some of the reasons these 2 sets of data can’t be comparable enough to be presented in this way: Team Sputnik doesn’t explain the San Marino data source, and I can’t find it (please let me know if you can!). Data from the use of Sputnik V in San Marino is super-imposed over results of a Swedish matched control study. That data representation pretty much throws the rules of clinical research out the window. Team Sputnik now claims it’s the “world’s best vaccine”, especially against Omicron: AstraZeneca ( US and Latin American trial) at 74.0% (CI 65-81).When you look at the efficacy results for the trials of other adenovirals, you need to keep in mind that unlike Sputnik’s Moscow trial, they were in far more diverse populations, and mostly included the emergence of variants of concern: (The 97.6% comes from an uncontrolled study that’s never been published as far as I know.)Įfficacy that high would put Sputnik closer to the Moderna, Novavax, and Pfizer vaccines than to the other adenovirus-based vaccines.

#Russia may be vaccine undermine immunize trial#

The preliminary results from Sputnik’s phase 3 trial included an efficacy rate of 91.6% against symptomatic disease (CI 86-95), in a 99% white population in Moscow. Actually, CanSino’s was the first vaccine authorized for use outside trials (in June 2020, initially for the military – Sputnik was registered in August). They badge it as “the world’s first registered COVID-19 vaccine with over 91.6% efficacy”, and also state its efficacy in Moscow was 97.6%. So how has the evidence panned out? Let’s start with team Sputnik’s claims. That’s about 2% of the world’s Covid vaccine production. The first 4 of those account for more than 1.5 billion doses each, while Sputnik V was closer to 300 million. The Big 5 are CoronaVac in first place, then Pfizer, Sinopharm’s Beijing vax, AstraZeneca, and Moderna. There was a flood of propaganda and claims, though, that makes scrutiny frustrating and dauntingly time-consuming.īy late last year, Sputnik V was way behind the major vaccines. And there are no publications for the late-stage trials of Sputnik Light, the intranasal use of the vaccine, or in under-18s. There was only a trickle of incomplete data from the Russian trials – the protocol and final results for the phase 3 trial were never published, and adverse reaction data wasn’t collected in the usual way in that trial, for example. The upshot has been that this vaccine was less used, and studied far less, too. (The first shot is based on adenovirus 26, like J&J’s, and the second, on adenovirus 5, like CanSino’s.) That led to promoting the first shot as a stand-alone single-dose vaccine, Sputnik Light.

From the start, there were major shortages, too, especially for Sputnik’s second shot. With WHO’s follow-up factory inspections in Russia now postponed, and Germany deciding to freeze local production, the chances of authorization look even lower.

#Russia may be vaccine undermine immunize plus#

The lack of an adequate research trail plus questions about manufacturing quality were massive hurdles to critical authorizations, including the WHO’s and EU’s.

With less data being generated as a result, the evidence base may not get a whole lot better than it is now.Īs I wrote here last year, the chain of clinical trials in Sputnik V’s development was riddled with problems. RDIF vigorously rejects that, of course, but between its sanctioned status, and the general barriers to doing business with Russia and moving material out of the country, ongoing supply will be severely hampered. The US Treasury described RDIF, the state-controlled intermediary behind the vaccine, as “a slush fund” for Russia’s president, and “emblematic of Russia’s broader kleptocracy”. Wartime sanctions have short-circuited Sputnik V’s future in most of the world.