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Russia was the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, and it also claims that its vaccine is the best.
Last week, two days after the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that the vaccine it has developed together with Germany’s BioNTech it was 90% effective To protect people against the virus, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which advocates for the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, issued a statement suggesting that its vaccine had a 92% efficacy rate.
This first Russian vaccine produced by the Gamalaya Institute in Moscow is named after Sputnik, the first satellite into space, launched by the Soviets in 1957.
The website says the name is a nod to the revitalization of space research after the first “Sputnik moment,” but the launch of Sputnik also marked the start of the Cold War space race.
Russia has said its vaccine is 92% effective
The Soviet spirit then was more competitive than collaborative and that does not seem to have changed.
Of course it is a “rat race,” says Svetlana Zavidova, executive director of the Russian association of clinical trial organizations.
She said: “When our president announced the registry on August 1, his first words were about testing this vaccine on his daughter. He never mentioned his daughters before.”
Svetlana Zavidova said there is a ‘rat race’ for a vaccine
The Russian president rarely speaks publicly about his family.
The Gamalaya Institute says it developed its analysis based on 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19 between trial participants, divided between those who received one or both injections of the vaccine and those who received a placebo.
In phase 3 trials of 40,000 participants, 16,000 had received both injections.
Pfizer’s interim analysis was based on 94 confirmed cases among its participants. The company said it had decided together with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to abandon a planned first analysis based on just 32 cases.
“It is really strange to do the analysis in only 20 cases,” said Ms Zavidova.
“How can we draw conclusions about 92% efficiency, based on that? Maybe they looked at the results from Pfizer and only added 2%.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this year that he would test vaccination on one of his daughters.
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His skepticism is reflected in the general Russian public.
Recent polls from the independent Levada survey suggest growing hesitancy around Russian vaccines, with mistrust and doubt the predominant reaction to reports of the appearance of the Russian-made vaccine in a late August survey.
Russia has also vaccinated 10,000 doctors and other high-risk groups with Sputnik V.
On the day RDIF released its interim analysis, three doctors who had received the first dose of the vaccine were reported to have contracted the virus in Siberia.
The Sputnik V vaccine has two components. Patients receive two injections, the second 21 days after the first. They are considered vaccinated three weeks after the second injection, the Russian Health Ministry said.
If the high efficacy of Sputnik V is confirmed during the remainder of the phase 3 trial period, then it has considerable advantages over the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine in terms of logistics.
Russia has claimed that its Sputnik V vaccine is more effective than the treatment created by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Pfizer vaccine requires storage at minus 70 degrees, while Sputnik V can be kept at minus 18 degrees, making it easy to store and distribute.
However, even the president has admitted that increasing the production of millions of doses of vaccine is still a problem in Russia due to a shortage of equipment.
As a result, Russia has had to delay the launch of mass vaccination.
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RDIF recently announced an agreement with South Korea to manufacture 150 million doses of the vaccine for worldwide distribution.
Russia has so far registered two vaccines and a third soon.
“The president has evaluated both the Sputnik product and the Vector very positively,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
“He also has high expectations for the third vaccine. He will make an announcement when he is vaccinated.”
