Russian COVID-19 Vaccine Shows Encouraging Results

Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: Early results from trials of a Covid vaccine developed in Russia suggest it could be 92% effective. The data is based on 20 cases of Covid-19 from 16,000 volunteers given the Sputnik V vaccine or a dummy injection. While some scientists welcomed the news, others said the data had been rushed out too early. The Sputnik V vaccine, developed at the National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, is currently going through phase III clinical trials in Belarus, UAE, Venezuela and India. So far there are no safety issues, with Russian researchers saying there were "no unexpected adverse events" 21 days after volunteers received their first of two injections. The Russian researchers say their data will be published "in one of the leading international peer-reviewed medical journals." If it's positive, it means there will almost certainly be more than one way of protecting people against the virus. The Pfizer vaccine injects part of the genetic code of the virus into the body to train the immune system. The other two use a harmless virus that has been genetically modified to resemble the coronavirus. Two doses are also required, but one advantage of Sputnik is that it doesn't need to be stored at very low temperatures, around -80C, unlike Pfizer's.

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