ROME, October 12. /TASS/. Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine demonstrates up to 82% efficacy against coronavirus variants, Andrea Antinori, director of the clinical research department at the National Institute for Infectious Diseases, which conducted the study on Sputnik V, told Italy’s Rai 3 TV channel late on Monday.

"Sputnik’s efficacy against [coronavirus] variants has been proved to be 82%. Compared with the 88% efficacy of Pfizer’s shot, it is not much lower. It is a high efficacy, at least against the Delta variant, which was proved by laboratory tests," he said.

According to Antinori, his institute took interest in the Russian vaccine after the publication on its efficacy in The Lancet scientific journal. "Its general efficacy of 91% is much higher than of other adenovirus-based vaccines, beginning with the Swedish-British AstraZeneca and the US’ Johnson & Johnson," he said.

He also noted that "it is one thing to have scientific data, and there is not much to argue about because Sputnik is effective, at least not less effective than other vaccines that have been approved," he said. "But it is quite another thing when it comes to production inspections, and the assessment of bioreactors - this is a job for regulators. But I don’t think we should depend on regulators’ conditions when assessing the quality and efficacy of the product."

In April, the Italian institute signed a three-year memorandum of cooperation with Russia’s Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, the Sputnik developer. The goal of the joint research is to study the Russian vaccine’s efficacy against coronavirus variants. The Italian institute has more than 100 coronavirus strains.

Francesco Vairo, director of Italy’s National Institute for Infectious Diseases, also said that it was planned to use Russia’s Sputnik in the study of combined use of adenovirus-type and mRNA vaccines. However, the study results have not yet been released because the Russian vaccine has not yet been approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Italy’s health ministry did not rule out earlier that it would recognize Sputnik V vaccination certificates.

Sputnik V vaccine

Russia was the world’s first country to register a coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, on August 11, 2020, and applied for its registration in the European Union and with the World Health Organization (WHO). According to the authoritative medical journal The Lancet, Sputnik V’s efficacy is 91.6% The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on March 4 it had begun the Sputnik V evaluation procedures to look at its compliance with the EU efficacy, safety and quality standards. So far, Sputnik V has been registered in 70 world nations with an overall population of four billion.