SYDNEY, February 5. /TASS/. The effectiveness of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus looks very promising, and modifying the medication if the virus mutates should not be complicated. This opinion was voiced to a TASS correspondent by Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine, Australian virologist Peter Charles Doherty.

"It’s [Sputnik V vaccine] 90% [rate of being] effective look[s] great, and Russia has a long history of developing good vaccines. The two adenovirus vector strategy makes sense. <...> The same basic technology used in the Janssen and AstraZeneca vaccines. Of course, if the virus changes significantly by mutation - it looks as though it may be in the process of doing it - they’ll [the creators of the vaccine] have to ‘tweak it’ a bit, but that’s straightforward," he said.

Earlier, The Lancet medical journal published the results of the Phase Three clinical trials of the Russian vaccine highlighting that it is one of the safest and the most effective worldwide. The drug’s efficacy amounts to 91.6%, while among vaccinated volunteers over 60 years of age that rate came to 91.8%. Antibodies to the coronavirus after being immunized with the Sputnik V jab were detected in 98% of the inoculated volunteers.

On August 11, 2020, Russia became the first worldwide to register a vaccine against the coronavirus dubbed Sputnik V. The inoculation was developed by the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Healthcare Ministry. Sputnik V is a human adenovirus-based vector vaccine. The Sputnik V jab has already been registered in Russia, Belarus, Argentina, Bolivia, Serbia, Algeria, Palestine, Venezuela, Paraguay, Turkmenistan, Hungary, the UAE, Iran, the Republic of Guinea, Tunisia and Armenia.

Peter Charles Doherty is an Australian virologist and immunologist, a Nobel Prize laureate in physiology and medicine for discoveries in the sphere of the human immune system, particularly, its ability to detect cells affected by a virus.