According to an announcement made, Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is said to be 92% effective in protecting people from Covid-19 according to the results of a temporary trial conducted.
Moreover, preliminary results are the second to be published from the final phase of human trials in a global effort to produce vaccines that can stop an epidemic that has killed more than 1.2 million individuals and damaged the world economy.
Although experts say Russian data encourages and reinforces the notion that pandemics can be stopped with vaccines, they warn that the results are based only on a small number of volunteers who underwent experiments after Covid-19 positive testing.
The analysis was performed after 20 participants were infected with the virus and underwent screening as well as receiving vaccine injections compared to placebo. In fact, it is lower than the 94 infections recorded in vaccine trials developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Meanwhile, to confirm the effectiveness of its vaccine, Pfizer said it will continue its trials until there are 164 cases of Covid-19 infection.
However, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which supports the development of Sputnik V, revealed that the Russian experiment will continue for six months.
According to Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamaleya Institute who developed the vaccine, the provisional results indicate that Sputnik V is effective and that mass vaccination will be launched in Russia in the coming weeks.
Following the announcement, European stocks and US futures rose slightly following Russia's announcement, although reactions were much weaker than Pfizer's results.
China's Sinopharm, which conducts large-scale final-stage clinical trials for two Covid-19 vaccine candidates, said they recorded better data than expected, although it did not provide further details.
