Sputnik V Vaccine No Longer Effective Against Coronavirus

But Belarusians are still being vaccinated with it.

The Russian vaccine Sputnik V in its original form no longer provides protection against new strains of coronavirus. This was revealed in an interview with Gazeta.ru by the head of the Gamaleya Centre, the developer of the Sputnik V vaccine, Alexander Gintsburg. He says that clinical trials of the updated version of the drug are currently underway. But Belarusians are still being vaccinated with it.

Sputnik's original formula proved effective for the first two years - from August 2020 to July 2022. From mid-2022, when the first variants of the omicron strain appeared, the vaccine's effectiveness decreased eightfold. With the emergence of variants 4 and 5, efficacy dropped by a factor of 20.

"And when the XBB.1.5 variant of Omicron ("Kraken") appeared - in January 2023 - Sputnik showed zero efficacy. That's why we had to change the antigenic composition of the vaccine last summer," says Gintsburg.

Scientists at the Gamaleya Centre have developed new vaccine variants based on XBB.1.5 that are currently in clinical trials. The trials are expected to conclude on 10 December. Ginzburg said it would be possible to start vaccinating with the new version of the drug after that date, but that all the registration procedures would have to be completed first: "This means that on 11 December we will start to build up the series and then test it, bringing forward the deadline for the new vaccine's civilian use by another 2.5 months. This means that the new Sputnik will be ready for civilian use in March. At the same time, Gintsburg admits, there is a chance that new strains of the virus will emerge by next spring and the vaccine will be "not very relevant or completely irrelevant". But by then the Russians will have no effective coronavirus vaccines at all. "Unless you count Konvasel and Novosibirsk's EpiVacCorona". These vaccines have marketing authorisations. Nothing has been heard about CoviVac for a long time," he clarified.

The two-component Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus was registered in August 2020. The RDIF estimated its effectiveness at 97.6% based on the results of data analysis of 3.8 million vaccinated Russians. The Ministry of Health of Belarus also uses the Russian drug for vaccination in our country.