The higher efficiency of the Russian vaccine “Sputnik V” in comparison with the foreign drug AZD1222 from AstraZeneca can be explained by the use of human adenovirus by domestic developers, not chimpanzees. This was reported on the Sputnik V Twitter account.
“A possible reason for the 62% effectiveness of AstraZeneca is that the immunity to the chimpanzee adenovirus vector after the first shot makes the second shot ineffective,” the report said.
It is noted that in the Russian drug, the effectiveness of which was estimated at 92 percent, this problem did not arise, because “two different human adenovirus vectors were used for two vaccinations.”
Earlier, a virologist, former head of the department of microbiology of latent infections of the National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology named after Gamaleya, Professor Viktor Zuev, compared the effectiveness of the Russian and Oxford vaccines against coronavirus. According to him, the AZD1222 vaccine, developed by the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, loses in comparison with the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, since its effectiveness is lower.
In September, AstraZeneca suspended trials of its COVID-19 vaccine after one study participant contracted transverse myelitis (inflammation of the spinal cord). Later, in October, it became known of the death of one of the volunteers for the national trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine. It turned out that the test taker had received a placebo, and the company continued testing.
