Gam-COVID-Vac phase 3 trial results: 91·6% efficacy and well tolerated

> I'm waiting for the J&J results after two-dose immunisation given this vaccine takes a similar (non mRNA) approach and appears to be very effective.

Given the J&J two dose trial (ENSEMBLE 2) only started just recently, and takes 60 days between two doses, this is going to take a while though. (I'm a volunteer. My second those is scheduled for mid-march.)

What's important is hospitalization and death. Ideally you want the vaccine to protect you against infection, but where we are today, having a vaccine with "only" 66% efficiency against infection but that protects you with > 85% from severe reaction is very promising. I'd take the J&J one shot vaccine in a heartbeat.

According to an article I read recently, the difference between 66% and 90% isn't actually very important when it comes to ending the pandemic.

The 66% vaccines and the 90+% vaccines were about equally as effective at preventing severe COVID cases. More people get it on the 66% vaccine, but their cases were like a mild to medium flu.

Most experts seem to believe that COVID is not going to be one of those viruses like smallpox or polio that we can for all practical purposes eliminate. They believe COVID is going to like cold and flu viruses.

The long term goal then is to get it so that when we do get it, which most of us inevitably will at some point, it is no worse than a mild flu. The 66% vaccines are as good as the 90+% vaccines for that.

It's worth something that it passed peer review and was published in The Lancet.

These seem to be preliminary results; it is mentioned in the paragraph at the top and throughout the report. The estimated completion date is May 1st, according to the clinicaltrials.gov link.

> Conversely, why did Astra Zeneca opted not to do it this way.

Because it's far more complicated (to manufacture and to distribute), and it isn't clear that it's necessary.

AZ are working with Sputnik to improve efficacy

Of course EU/UK/USA consider it. But none of these vaccines have provided any trustworthy data of their efficacy and safety. And none of the makers of these vaccines even applied to be used in EU/UK/USA.

If today's publication changes that status for Sputnik V remains to be seen. Still many open questions.

Consider to what end?

The Moderna vaccine had been designed by January 13, 2020 [1] -- before a single case was confirmed in the US. It took only a weekend to finish. In contrast it took nearly a year to finish testing, and even this was an abbreviated schedule.

I haven't seen anything to suggest that the Russian or Chinese vaccines were safer or more effective, or that they could be more easily produced in large numbers. Indeed, according to the data here [2], neither Russia nor China has vaccinated as many of their citizens as has the US.

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...

Isn't the Occam's razor answer here just down to logistics?

1. Theyre just publishing phase 3 results now, so they were slower than the mRNA shots

2. The Chinese and Russians will probably use their supply for themselves first (understandably), and so by the time they would have any to give us, we'll be almost done anyway.

Just seems like there's mostly no point.

Moderna and Pfizer are both American companies, and AstraZeneca is swedish/british with R&D in the US. These companies also have experience dealing with the FDA and EMA, which can't be underrated.

Distrust. There are results now, but somehow approval already happened 08/2020. Chances are that if trial results turned out significantly worse the 2020 approval would be the last result we ever heard.

Actually Canada's government first agreement was with a Chinese company to develop the vaccine (instead of supporting local companies). That deal blew up spectacularly and we had to order from others very late in the game. That is why Canada's vaccination campaign is a total mess.

Would they even be able to get those vaccines faster than their own vaccines? I'm assuming that Russia and China don't have a giant surplus sitting around, since they have their own people to vaccinate, so the West would have to manufacture them.

They would be starting from scratch, where with their own vaccines, I believe they had already started manufacturing them in anticipation that they would soon be approved.

J&J only announced phase 3 results a few days ago and will be up for approval shortly. the Astrazenaca vaccine's results were a mess of p-hacking and mixing methods (they reported a result on a half-size first dose which occurred by accident and in a non-representative population because it looked good).

Personally it makes me more confident in the FDA that they have yet to approve that vaccine.

The AZ vaccine has had data issues in its trial and the FDA is waiting on the US trial arm to finish (likely a month from now) before making a decision. The J&J vaccine has just released data and will likely be authorized in a couple weeks, but manufacturing issues mean that we won’t see tens of millions of doses until April. Novavax is in a similar boat, they won’t have much manufacturing available until late spring and their US trial only started in December so it will run until April.

Unfortunately everything became political in this pandemic. Nothing wrong with a bit of national price. Russia inherited a very good scientific base for vaccine research and didn't squander it all, so I think they had a good case to be so risky.