Would You Take Russia's Covid-19 Vaccine?
Even without seeing detailed trial data, there are reasons to be confident in the Sputnik V shot. The same can’t be said yet for China’s CoronaVac vaccine.
Russia’s shot is similar to AstraZeneca’s and appears to work just fine.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/BloombergWhen it comes to Covid-19 vaccines, a lot of attention seems to have centered on the ones being made in the West. So it may come as a surprise that Russia is fifth on the list of vaccine makers with the most doses under contract through pre-purchase agreements, according to Bloomberg’s Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker. The shot — whimsically named Sputnik V and developed by the Gamaleya institute — is just behind GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Sanofi’s candidate in the rankings and ahead of the shots developed by Moderna Inc. and Johnson & Johnson. This is notable for a vaccine that has yet to be featured in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. How do we know we can trust it?
Russia hasn’t released late-stage phase III data on its vaccine; all we have to go on are press announcements, similar to the situation with the Chinese shot made by Sinovac Biotech Ltd. The assumption is that regional health authorities have approved the Russian vaccine based on good efficacy and safety data, but there is no way of independently verifying these things without actually seeing it ourselves. That said, what we do know about Sputnik V and its design should give us some degree of confidence.