Coronavirus: AstraZeneca to trial Covid-19 vaccine combination with Russia’s Sputnik V

Name: World gears up to distribute Covid-19 vaccines as drug makers await medical regulator approvals
Uploaded: 2020-12-11T11:04:29.000Z
Duration: 3 min 13 s
Description: World gears up to distribute Covid-19 vaccines as drug makers await medical regulator approvals

Adults over the age of 18 will be enrolled in the trials that are expected to start before the end of this year

Last week Russia started a public vaccination drive, offering the shot initially to doctors and other people in risk groups

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A health worker injects the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine into a patient’s arm at a clinic in Moscow, Russia. Photo: Bloomberg

Agence France-Presse

Published: 7:04pm, 11 Dec 2020Updated: 10:21pm, 11 Dec 2020

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca’s Russian branch said on Friday it would use part of Russia’s home-made Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine in further clinical trials.

“Today we announce a clinical trial programme to assess safety and immunogenicity of a combination of AZD1222, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and Sputnik V, developed by Russian Gamaleya Research institute,” AstraZeneca said in a statement published on its website in English and Russian.

The pharmaceutical company said that adults over the age of 18 will be enrolled in the trials.

Both the AZD1222 and Sputnik V jabs use human adenovirus vectors.

Russia’s Direct Investment Fund, which funded the development of Sputnik V, said in a statement on Friday that on November 23 it offered AstraZeneca “to use one of the two vectors of the Sputnik V vaccine in additional clinical trials of its own vaccine”.

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World gears up to distribute Covid-19 vaccines as drug makers await medical regulator approvals

Those trials are expected to start before the end of this year.