Doctors explained why the Sputnik V vaccine no longer protects against coronavirus. Experts’ opinions are provided by RBC.
Virologists believe that the effectiveness of the original Sputnik vaccine has decreased due to the fact that the genotype of the coronavirus has changed over time. Against the background of changes in its genome, various variants of the disease have appeared, which may differ from the original one, experts noted.
Thus, virologist Anatoly Altstein explained that there are viruses with a stable genome, like the smallpox virus, and there are viruses that include different variants – “serotypes”, they differ from each other. There was initially no information about what the coronavirus would be like. “We didn’t know whether it would be a stable virus that would retain its properties for several years, or whether it would start to give rise to variants, and what those variants would be,” Altstein added.
His colleague, virologist Alexei Agranovsky, noted that there are traditional vaccines that are created “once and for all,” for example, against smallpox, measles, and polio. But this is not the case with coronavirus. The S-protein changes during the evolution of the virus, so vaccines need to be updated, the expert noted.
He recalled that the original was the “Wuhan” variant of the coronavirus, but then it began to give variants – “alpha”, “beta”, “gamma”, which were very similar in the properties of the surface of the viral particle to the original virus. The Sputnik drug was made for the S-protein of the “Wuhan” strain, and over time, the developed vaccine began to produce fewer neutralizing antibodies and ceased to protect against coronavirus infection, Agranovsky admitted.
Virologists have confirmed that the development of new vaccines in the Russian Federation is currently ongoing. They will probably appear in the country early next year.
Let us note that earlier the head of the Center named after. Gamaleya Alexander Ginzburg said that the coronavirus vaccine “Sputnik V” with the emergence of the COVID-19 “kraken” strain stopped protecting completely.
According to official data, more than 89 million people, or 60.9% of the population, have been vaccinated in the Russian Federation with at least one component of the vaccine. Over 79 million people have been fully vaccinated.
Source: Rosbalt
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