Russia approves trials of mixing AstraZeneca and Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccines

The Russian health ministry on Tuesday gave a go-ahead to conduct the physical trials of combining the doses of AstraZeneca Vaccine and Sputnik Vaccine. Russia’s state drug register has allowed five Russian clinics to hold the trials and requested them to finish it off by early March 2021.

Earlier, the clinical trials for approval process were suspended by the health ministry’s ethical committee in May and had sought more information about it. UAE, Azerbaijan and Belarus are already conducting the human trials of mixing AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines.

Russia approves combining two adenovirus Vaccines to boost immunity: AstraZeneca + Sputnik V

The AstraZeneca vaccine has been built by the UK based drug company AstraZeneca and the Oxford University, on the other hand, Sputnik V has been developed in Russia. Both the COVID vaccines consist of two doses-- the initial shot and the booster shot. They are both the adenovirus vaccines, which means they consist of the engineered virus, called adenoviral vectors, which are designed to shuttle a gene from SARS-Cov-2 to the body. AstraZeneca uses only one viral vector, however, Sputnik V uses different viral vectors for two different doses.

This comes in as several countries have already allowed the trials to research the effects of inoculating mix and match doses of COVID-19 vaccines for greater immunity. The trials of the same are being conducted in the US, UK, China, Bahrain, Indonesia, Italy, UAE etc. To date, many scientific studies have suggested that administering two different vaccines can build stronger and long-lasting immunity against COVID-19 than administering two doses of the same vaccine.

Scientists approve mixing and matching of COVID-19 vaccines 

In the past as well, many times this has been done safely. In India, different vaccines were used to evict the Ebola virus and combinations of rotavirus vaccines have also been used and tested in India. Experts suggest that giving people two different vaccines, allows their immune system to understand the pathogen better since both vaccines will stimulate different responses by exposing different parts of the pathogen to the human body, For example, if one vaccine consists of one type of Spike protein of SARS-CoV2, another vaccine will consist of some other part of the pathogen.

Scientists say that giving two different vaccines might generate a stronger immune response, perhaps because the shots stimulate slightly different parts of the immune system or teach it to recognise different parts of an invading pathogen.

Both the AstraZeneca/Oxford and Sputnik V vaccines involve two doses -- an initial shot and a booster-- but Sputnik V uses different viral vectors for its two shots. So-called viral vector shots use harmless modified viruses as vehicles, or vectors, to carry genetic information that helps the body build immunity against future infections.

Image: AP