High efficacy of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine in protecting the elderly confirmed by large Argentinian study

A real-world study carried out in the Argentinean capital of Buenos Aires has proven the high efficacy of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 in those aged above 60, the distributor of the jab has said.

The results of the large-scale research by the Ministry of Health of the City of Buenos Aires were published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) last week.

The study included more than 660,000 elderly residents of Buenos Aires who had been vaccinated with Sputnik V, AstraZeneca and Sinopharm jabs between June 1 and June 15, 2021.

According to the paper, infection rates decreased by over 88% among those fully vaccinated, while mortality dropped by 96.6%.

Two-dose vaccination also contributed to a 94.2% reduction of all-cause deaths among those aged 80 and over, and a 98.2% reduction among those aged between 70 and 79.

Sputnik V was the leading vaccine in the survey, with over 63% of the participants injected with the Russian-designed jab.The Argentinean study “reconfirms great efficacy of Sputnik V in protecting the elderly,” the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which funded the development of the Russian jab and now oversees its distribution, said in a statement. 

The RDIF pointed to other research by the Buenos Aires health ministry that was published in June and revealed the single-shot Sputnik Light vaccine had an efficacy of 78.6–83.7% among people aged between 60 and 79.

Sputnik V has been one of the main vaccines used in Argentina’s immunization drive. The Russian jab has contributed to Covid-19 cases in the capital dropping “at least 15 times”over the last five months, the RDIF said.

Its high efficacy of 97.6% in those fully vaccinated and lack of any significant known side effects has generated praise in the international scientific community, including from the prestigious medical magazine The Lancet.

The Russian jab is already registered in 70 countries but is still lacking authorization from the EU's regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and the World Health Organization (WHO). In late October, the WHO said it was resuming the approval procedure after a month-long pause caused by the claimed discovery of irregularities at one of the plants where Sputnik V is manufactured.

During his address to the G20 summit over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the world’s leading nations to work out a mechanism to efficiently update vaccines against Covid-19 in light of the new variants and accelerate the recognition of each other’s jabs. 

Competition in the area of vaccines only undermines the global vaccination efforts and exacerbates inequality in access to the jab, he pointed out.

Putin again highlighted the high effectiveness of Sputnik V and said its single-component version could be used as a booster shot to vaccines produced by other countries. 

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