Using the Russia-developed Sputnik Light vaccine together with the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab against Covid-19 appears to be safe, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said in a statement on Monday. The Russian sovereign wealth fund cited preliminary results of clinical trials conducted jointly by producers of the two vaccines in several countries.
The safety claim is based on results of the Phase II trials of the combo in Russia and Azerbaijan. In each country, 100 volunteers received a jab of AstraZeneca vaccine followed by a Sputnik Light jab, or vice versa, and were monitored for almost 60 days after the initial injection, RDIF said.
The combination “demonstrated an acceptable safety profile, which is consistent with the results of previous AstraZeneca vaccine, Sputnik V and Sputnik Lite vaccines clinical trials,” the statement said.
Sputnik Light is the first dose of the two-dose human adenovirus vector vaccine Sputnik V, which was developed by the Gamaleya Center in Moscow. The Oxford-designed vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca uses a similar adenovirus vector platform, though the virus in question is a chimpanzee virus rather than a human one.