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HIGHLIGHTS

  • Sputnik V has received emergency use approval in India
  • Highly transmissible Delta variant has further mutated to form Delta Plus
  • Antibodies developed after vaccination with Sputnik V protect from all variants: Gintsburg

Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine protects against all known variants of Covid-19, said Alexander Gintsburg. Gintsburg is the head of The Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, the facility where Sputnik V was developed.

Sputnik V is the third vaccine after Covishield and Covaxin to have received emergency use approval in India. The two-dose adenoviral vector-based coronavirus vaccine is being administered in select private hospitals for Rs Rs 1,145 per dose.

In a statement on Tuesday, Alexander Gintsburg said, “Antibodies developed after vaccination with #SputnikV protect from all variants of COVID known today, starting from the UK variant to the so-called Delta variant, first detected in India.”

The UK strain (B.1.1.7), tagged by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the Alpha variant, was first discovered in Kent in September of last year. The strain, which has 23 known mutations so far, has become the dominant variant both in the UK and the United States.

On the other hand, the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant was first found in India in October of last year. The highly transmissible strain has been identified as one of the drivers of the second wave of Covid-19 infections that devastated parts of the country in May. The highly transmissible Delta variant has further mutated to form the Delta Plus variant.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) cited a study on June 15 to say that Sputnik V is “more efficient against the Delta variant” of coronavirus than any other vaccine that has published results on the strain so far. The Gamaleya Center study has been “submitted for publication in an international peer-reviewed journal”, said a tweet from the Russian-made vaccine’s official Twitter handle.

In fact, the makers of Sputnik V have offered booster shots to other vaccine makers to combat the Delta variant of coronavirus. “We offer all vaccine makers to use our shot in cocktails against #COVID mutations,” RDIF said in a tweet on June 17.

Approved for emergency use in 67 countries, Sputnik V has an efficacy rate of over 91.6 per cent.

Author

India today

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