COVID-19: Russia Says Its ‘Sputnik V’ Vaccine Is 92% Effective

NOVEMBER 11, 2020 

• The announcement follows Pfizer and BioNTech’s which said their vaccine, also undergoing Phase 3 trials, was 90% effective at preventing Covid-19.

Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is 92% effective, its developers said on Wednesday as the global race heats up over mass vaccination to slow the spread of the pandemic that has killed many people and affected economies globally.

Interim results showed that 20 of the 16,000 volunteers who received both Sputnik V doses have contracted Covid-19, the Russian Health Ministry, state-run Gamaleya research center and Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said in a statement.

“As a result of a statistical analysis of 20 confirmed cases of coronavirus, the case split between vaccinated individuals and those who received the placebo indicates that the Sputnik V vaccine had an efficacy rate of 92% after the second dose,” the statement said.

Read also: First COVID-19 Vaccine Is 90 Percent Effective, Says Pfizer 

More than 20,000 volunteers have received the first dose of Sputnik V as of Wednesday, according to Gamaleya, the Health Ministry and RDIF.

The Moscow Times reports that the developers said that “some” of the volunteers experienced short-term “pain at the injection site [and] flu-like syndrome including fever, weakness, fatigue and headache.” They noted that these adverse effects were expected.

Sputnik V’s final, or Phase 3, trials involve a total of 40,000 volunteers at around two dozen Moscow clinics.

Separate Sputnik V injections being administered to medics and other at-risk groups outside Moscow demonstrated the vaccine’s efficacy rate of over 90%, the developers said.