Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine is holding up well against the Delta variant, a paper posted yesterday on the preprint server medRxiv shows. The study of nearly 14,000 people showed the two-dose vaccine reduces the risk of hospitalization with COVID-19 by 81% and helped prevent severe lung injury, Science reported.
A team led by epidemiologist Anton Barchuk of the European University at St. Petersburg asked doctors at two such centers to inquire about patients’ vaccination status. The government data suggest about 96% of vaccine recipients in St. Petersburg got Sputnik V. The analysis included 13,894 patients, 1291 of whom were fully vaccinated. Of the participants, 495 were referred to hospital.
Sputnik V offered completely vaccinated patients—who had had their second shot at least 2 weeks before coming to the triage center—81% protection against being hospitalized, the study found. The study included too few people to detect a statistically significant benefit of partial vaccination. “Our data confirm that the benefits of vaccination include attenuating disease severity in breakthrough cases,” Barchuk says.
Even though the study did not confirm which viral variants patients had, Russian health authorities attributed 95% of COVID-19 cases to the Delta variant in July and August.
The researchers also found that Sputnik V had 76% effectiveness at protecting against severe lung injury from COVID-19, meaning more than 50% of the lung is visibly affected on a CT scan. “We were able to get this rather unique data because no one in the world seems to perform as many CT scans for patients with mild disease as Russia does,” Barchuk says.
