Coronavirus: Russian vaccine reached during test of …

The Gamaleya Center, which is developing the Russian vaccine Sputnik V, assured on Monday that it obtained an efficacy against the coronavirus of 91.4% and underlined the importance of the contract signed with Argentina to receive the drug.

“The efficacy of the Sputnik V vaccine is 91.4%, based on the final checkpoint analysis of data obtained 21 days after the administration of the first dose,” the Gamaleya Center said in a statement. .

In a virtual press conference, the Managing Director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Kiril Dmitreiv, highlighted as one of the achievements of the Gamaleya Center the agreement signed with Argentina to receive the vaccine, and pointed out that in the coming days, the results of clinical trials will be published in the scientific journal Lancet.

He also reported that more than 200,000 people had already been vaccinated.

“Today is a very important day we have very good news, the vaccine has passed the last testsDmitreiv said, noting that Sputnik V has also been shown to be effective for severe cases of Covid-19.

On this point, the Gamaleya Center underlined that the vaccine’s efficacy in severe cases of coronavirus was 100%. “Among the confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, 20 serious cases were recorded in the placebo group, while no serious cases were recorded in the vaccine group,” the statement said.

Dmitreiv stressed that they expect the 91.4 percent efficacy to be even “higher after day 21” and that these results “allow us to rank the Sputnik V vaccine as one of the most effective in the world “.

The vaccine is developed by the National Center for Research in Epidemiology and Microbiology named after NF Gamaleya of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation (Gamaleya Center) and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, the sovereign fund of the Russia).

Alexander Guinzburg, director of the Gamaleya Center, stressed during the press conference that the clinical trials were conducted on 26,000 people who received the first dose and 21,000 who had already received two doses of the vaccine. In addition, he assured that, unlike other vaccine developers, Gamaleya will no longer perform tests with groups of people who receive a placebo “for an ethical question” since Russia began its vaccination plan.

“There is no point in continuing the tests because the effectiveness is already proven and we do not need additional patients to continue the tests”Dmitreiv added.

According to the statement released by the developers, among the people who participated in the clinical trial “No unexpected adverse events were identified” and they expected participants to continue to be monitored “for at least 6 months after receiving the first vaccine.”

Regarding the agreement with Argentina, Dmitreiv assured that “we have obtained brilliant data which allows us to publish the results in the Lancet, to sign agreements like the one with Argentina and the decision of AstraZeneca – which works with the University of Oxford – to jointly develop clinical trials “.