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Comment by iainmerrick | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have a good link for the current status of the Gamaleya (Sputnik V) vaccine? I’ve been hearing and reading a lot of FUD about it, but if you were to take the (self reported) stats in this BBC article at face value it looks like one of the best options.

I found eg this Wired article that talks a lot about the geopolitical maneuvering of Russia/China/India in Africa and South America: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/russia-covid-vaccine-sputnik...

But really, despite a lot of pejorative language in there -- “Once they have this relationship, they can extort whatever they want” -- it just sounds like the same strategy the UK has been attempting (both politically, and in terms of vaccine development and approval), except the Russian version sounds more successful so far.

Edit to add: apologies in advance for dragging politics into this! But it seems like politics and vaccines are unfortunately intertwined.

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their website has a good explainer of the differences (uses 2 different adenoviruses, which are also different from the ones the AZ vaccine uses): https://sputnikvaccine.com/about-vaccine/

Their Phase 1/2 results were published in Lancet[1], which also printed an opinion about the politics of the vaccine[2]

They have reported their final data for their phase 3 study in a press releace which states they will be published in a journal soon [3].

1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

2. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

3. https://sputnikvaccine.com/newsroom/pressreleases/the-sputni...

Thanks for that second link especially, this is exactly what I was looking for!

It sounds like much of the communication and release of scientific data has been bad, but in general the approach is sound and it’s likely to work well.

The same criticism about miscommunication could be (and has been) levelled at AZ, over the full-dose/half-dose mix-up.

> it just sounds like the same strategy the UK has been attempting

You mean selling the COVID vaccine to 3rd world countries at cost/zero-profit, or others prior to this?

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/23/o...

Well, yes! Substitute “zero profit” with “low cost” and it sounds like the same idea.

The key question would seem to be, who can produce and distribute those billions of doses first? Is the AstraZeneca vaccine being produced at a large enough scale already, and/or has the current capacity already been bought up by the EU and other rich countries?

"Big Pharma" needs to make a profit from somewhere to finance r&d. 9 in 10 drugs (warning, made up statistic alert) don't reach the market, or something like that. And then they need to spend money on manufacturing. Then of course you have 'generics' when the drug is out of patent and other companies can produce it without royalties.

From the BBC article(s) I believe the UK has ordered 100m doses. I have no idea who is producing those though, and how long it takes.

Multiple factories, though one is the Serum Institute of India, said to be the largest in the world.

https://in.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india-c...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus...

As far as I can tell the data on the Chinese Sinovac and Russian Sputnik (which are of the same type) are consistent with the data for Oxford/AstraZeneca.

So politics aside, this is hopeful.

Excellent link. A lot of detailed information.

Not sure if you've heard this as well, but Astra and Gamelaya are actually trialing a combination vaccine (1 AZ dose, 1 Sputnik-V dose).

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