Corona vaccine: here comes Sputnik!

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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A lack of transparency and the early start of the vaccination fueled distrust of the Russian vaccine six months ago. Independent experts have now confirmed that it is highly effective - and has few side effects. Will Sputnik V soon also be used in Germany?

The Russians had already rushed ahead with the approval of their vaccine “Sputnik V” in August 2020 - long before the important Phase III study with thousands of test subjects was completed.

That, and the fact that important study data remained unpublished, fueled suspicion. Russia is now exporting vaccine, which is now officially called Gam-COVID-Vac, to 15 countries including Mexico, Malaysia and the EU member Hungary. According to Russian sources, he has already been vaccinated 1.5 million times.

Effectiveness of 91.6 percent

Now the manufacturers of the state-run Gamaleja Institute are also publishing an interim report on the study data of 20,000 test subjects (three quarters of them vaccinated) in the renowned specialist magazine "The Lancet". The vaccine has an effectiveness of 91.6 percent and is almost on par with the mRNA vaccine from BioNTech / Pfizer and Moderna.

In addition, it should work just as well on people over 60 as on younger people. It had been tested in advance on 2,000 people in this age group.

The tolerability also appears convincing: only vaccination reactions such as flu-like symptoms and pain at the injection site occurred more frequently. In three deaths that occurred shortly after a vaccination, the vaccination could be ruled out as the cause.

In the meantime, independent scientists have rated the publication and declared it convincing.

Spahn open to vaccines from China and Russia

Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) had recently told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he wanted to use Russian and Chinese vaccines in Germany as well, provided that they received the green light from the European Medicines Agency EMA. At Sputnik V, the prerequisites for this now seem to have been created.

Russia announced days ago that it would be able to deliver 100 million vaccine doses to Europe. However, the Russian manufacturer is already grappling with production bottlenecks.

Vector vaccine like AstraZeneca

Like the active ingredient from AstraZeneca, the Russian vaccine is a so-called vector vaccine - but it is obviously much more effective. For this purpose, a harmless virus is equipped with a gene snippet from Sars-CoV-2. With the virus taxi, it gets into the body cells, which then produce the actual vaccine: a protein from the spike protein of Sars-CoV-2.

However, there is a risk that the body will also develop an immunity to the transporter virus and intercept it with the second vaccination dose. That is why the Russian scientists use two different vector viruses.

Another advantage of the method is that, unlike the highly sensitive mRNA vaccines, the vaccine can be stored at refrigerator temperatures.

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