Sputnik V gives 90% protection against Delta strain, says scientist

Sergey Netesov, head of the Novosibirsk State University’s Laboratory and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), told Sputnik that viral vector and mRNA vaccines, including Russia’s Sputnik V, give adequate protection against the new Delta coronavirus strain.

‘According to data from the UK, the US and other countries, mRNA and vector vaccines, including our Sputnik V, protect against it [the Delta variant], albeit to a lesser extent, but they do protect against it. They offered 95 percent protection against the initial strain and now they give 90% protection against the ‘delta’ variant,’ Netesov said.

He went on to say that the vaccinations that have already been created should be utilized since they are quite effective.

Vladimir Gushchin, the head of the Gamaleya research center’s population variability mechanisms laboratory, which developed the Sputnik V vaccine, said at the end of June that the Russian shots provide nearly 100 percent protection against severe and fatal cases of COVID-19 caused by the Delta strain.

In August 2020, Russia became the first country in the world to register the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. Sputnik V, also known as Gam-COVID-Vac, delivers the genetic code for the coronavirus’s spike protein (SARS-CoV-2) into human cells using two distinct modified adenoviruses (rAd26 and rAd5 for the first and second doses, respectively).

Adenoviruses generally cause only moderate sickness in people, and the Russian inventors hoped to improve the vaccine’s efficiency by opting for two distinct delivery methods instead of simply one modified adenovirus, as the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines do.

The Sputnik V vaccine had 91.6 percent effectiveness, according to an initial review published in The Lancet medical journal.

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Meanwhile, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the Gamaleya National Research Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which created Sputnik V, have claimed that it has 97.6% effectiveness.

Unlike the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, there have been no reports of uncommon blood-clotting problems in patients who have been vaccinated with Sputnik V from Russian health authorities or from more than 60 nations that have adopted the vaccine.