Russia’s announcement of a second highly effective coronavirus vaccine is potentially “tremendous news,” according to Trinity Professor Luke O’Neill.

The Moscow Institute yesterday claimed its Sputnik V vaccine is 92% effective.

The Russian vaccine trial has previously faced criticism after officials decided to administer it to 10,000 healthcare officials before completing Phase Three trials.

Now the company is claiming an efficacy rate above 90% for the trial and for the 10,000 healthcare workers.

    

On The Pat Kenny Show, Professor O’Neil said officials are being “slightly more cautious” about the Russian trial, because it includes a lot less patients than the Pfizer one.

“But still, they are saying they are getting this very high level of efficacy,” he said.

“They had a quarter of the number of patients compared to Pfizer so you have to be very careful and again it is a press release as opposed to a scientific study – but even still, it is in the right direction.

“Now again, you’ve got to be very careful because, us scientists, we are very cautious and we have to see all of the data – but if it did turn out there is a second vaccine at that level of efficacy that would be tremendous news.”

Moscow Institute

He said the Moscow Institute is “not that well known” but admitted that is “partly because they were always under the radar, like many Russian scientific endeavours.”

“But again, they seem to be reasonably credible and the second cause for slight optimism is the technology they are using has been used before,” he said.

“It is a tweak on previous technologies but it has been used a bit in the Ebola vaccine for instance.

“There were over 250 clinical trials with this kind of technology whereas the RNA approach, the Pfizer approach, is newer.

“Those previous trials showed previous safety and efficacy so that tells us maybe this is one to look at closely.”

Sputnik V

He said the Sputnik V vaccine is produced using the common cold, whereas the Pfizer uses the RNA molecule.

“So, there are reasons to think there is something in this,” he said.

“They have ramped up production, they claim they are making 1.2 billion doses and they are going to make half-a-billion available to outside Russia – so that is good if that’s true, this vaccine may go in the pool of vaccines.”

He said scientists remain cautious because the press release announcements by both companies without any hard data is “unusual practice in any kind of drug discovery.”

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