MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/. The domestic Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus as well as other similar vaccine preparations being developed in the country will help manage and control this infection. This opinion was voiced to TASS by chief of the epidemiology and evidence-based medicine department of the Sechenov medical university, chief non-resident epidemiologist of the Russian Healthcare Ministry Nikolay Briko.
"[Vaccine] is the sole radical effective instrument capable of stopping the spread of this infection. The measures being undertaken on social distancing, isolation, mask regime, and other restrictions do have an influence but don’t solve the problem completely. The problem can be solved only by the availability of an effective vaccine. This is wonderful, it’s good that such vaccine exists and that it was created in Russia. I am confident that with the help of this vaccine we will manage to control this infection," he said.
The expert noted that he thinks the development of a number of vaccines in the country is a good thing since he is confident that they "will also be in demand."
The scientist added that precisely with the help of inoculation it is possible to create herd immunity necessary to fight the pandemic. He also thinks that various critical remarks on the Russian vaccine, including those from abroad, are a "simple manifestation of competition."
"All those attacks, that allegedly something there was not entirely complied with, they are, in fact, groundless. This vaccine was created on the basis of technologies which have been already developed and tested. <...> That is why, by using these technologies it was possible to create rapidly the vaccine now dubbed Sputnik V. Now a very massive, large-scale post-registration world-standard study with 40,000 volunteers is being launched which will be not only a multi-center study in our country but also [a study] conducted simultaneously in a number of other countries. That is, a massive, and, essentially, an international study of its effectiveness. The safety of the vaccine has already been proven," the expert concluded.
Registered on August 11, Russian Sputnik V preparation became the first vaccine against the coronavirus worldwide that obtained state registration. The preparation was developed by the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Healthcare Ministry. In all, over 160 vaccines are being developed worldwide with over 30 of them being at the stage of clinical trials on humans.