Russia Asks Oxford Vaccine To Combine With Sputnik V To Boost Effectiveness

It has been almost a year since COVID-19 entered our lives and since then our lives have never been the same.?

Whether it’s working from home, maintaining social distancing or the fear one gets when they catch a common cold or cough. And all our hopes trickle down to the vaccines that are in development, to take down SARS CoV-2.

Reuters

While Moderna was the first to announce that it is working on a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, people were most hopeful for the vaccine being developed by researchers at Oxford University. Even Indians were hoping for the success of the vaccine since India’s Serum Institute was going to manufacture these vaccines and provide it to the nation at an affordable price.?

However, when Oxford-AstraZeneca revealed that their vaccine was up to 70 percent effective, it didn’t get the positive response it deserved, as other competing vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and even Russia’s Sputnik V showed up to 95 percent effectiveness.?

Researchers at Oxford acknowledged that an error in trials, where some patients were administered a half dose and full dose, saw the effectiveness of 90 percent. On the other hand, administering two full doses brought down the number to 62 percent. They also announced that they’ll be conducting their trials once again to get an accurate picture of the vaccine’s effectiveness.?

And now, the developers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine are asking to team up their vaccine with the one developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca to boost the latter’s effectiveness.?

Twitter: Sputnik V

The developers of the Russian vaccine, Gamaleya Research Institute, said on their Twitter account, "Current full dose AstraZeneca regimen resulted in 62% efficacy. If they go for a new clinical trial, we suggest trying a regimen of combining the AZ shot with the Sputnik V human adenoviral vector shot to boost efficacy. Combining vaccines may prove important for revaccinations."

While we don’t know if doing that would make things better, It’ll be interesting to see if Oxford-AstraZeneca decide to team up with the Russian research team on this.