Sputnik V Vaccine Is 95% Effective, Says Russia

Russia’s Sputnik V covid-19 vaccine is 95 percent effective according to a second interim analysis of clinical trial data, its developers announced on Tuesday.

The two-dose vaccine will be available on international markets for less than $10 (8.40 euros) per dose, they said, and will be free for Russian citizens.

AFP reports that the vaccine can be stored at between two and eight degrees Celsius (between 35.6 and 46.4 degrees Fahrenheit), they said, instead of the temperatures below freezing required for some other vaccines.

The calculations of its effectiveness were based on preliminary data obtained 42 days after the first dose, Russia’s health ministry, the state-run Gamaleya research center and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said in a statement.

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

The statement said that the vaccine had shown 91.4 percent effectiveness 28 days after the first dose, a figure based on 39 cases.

Forty-two days later, after a second dose, data showed “an efficacy of the vaccine above 95 percent.”

“The second analysis was conducted a week after volunteers got the second dose, meaning that their bodies have partially reacted to both doses,” Gamaleya’s director Alexander Gintsburg said in the statement.

He said the centre expects the efficacy rate to be “even higher” three weeks after the second dose.

The statement added that 22,000 volunteers had been vaccinated with the first dose and more than 19,000 with both doses.