MOSCOW—The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, announced on Monday that the single-component Sputnik Light vaccine against the coronavirus has been approved under the emergency use authorization (EUA) by the Philippines’s Food and Drug Administration.
Based on human adenovirus serotype 26, the Sputnik Light vaccine is the first component of the Sputnik V vaccine, which is seen by the Russian Federation to help significantly reduce infection rates in the Philippines and establish herd immunity in the latter in a short period of time.
Said vaccine is safe and highly effective as demonstrated by real-world vaccination data in a number of countries. In particular, data from Argentina’s Ministry of Health yielded 78.6 to 83.7-percent efficacy among the elderly. Meanwhile, it is 93.5-percent effective in Paraguay’s ongoing vaccination campaign.
In March 2021 the two-dose Sputnik V vaccine was approved in the Philippines under EUA. The jab has been authorized in 69 countries covering a total population of more than 3.7 billion people to date.
Based on its safety and efficacy, the single-component Sputnik Light vaccine is now both used on a standalone basis, and also studied in combination with counterparts from other producers in a number of countries. The heterogeneous boosting approach, or “vaccine cocktail” using human adenovirus serotype 26 as the first component and human adenovirus serotype 5 as the second component, was at the core of Sputnik V—the world’s first registered vaccine versus the coronavirus.
With this successful approach in creating a longer and more durable immunity against the coronavirus, RDIF took the lead in initiating partnerships with other vaccine producers to conduct joint studies with a combination of the first component of Sputnik V with foreign vaccines. Studies on the combination of Sputnik Light with other vaccines are ongoing in Argentina, Azerbaijan, and the United Arab Emirates. They have been approved in Russia and Belarus.
RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said, “The approval of Sputnik Light by…regulatory authorities of the Philippines allows for expanding [its national vaccine portfolio by adding another Russian variant, which has demonstrated safety and high efficacy in many countries. A single-shot Sputnik Light has efficacy higher than that of many foreign two-dose vaccines, and enables the vaccination of] more people in a shorter time frame.”
Other key advantages of Sputnik Light, according to the RDIF and the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Philippines, are as follows:
- It has been proven effective against all new strains of the coronavirus, as demonstrated by the Gamaleya Center during laboratory tests.
- The vaccine is compatible with standard storage and logistics requirements.
- It is based on a well-studied human adenoviral vector platform proven safe and effective with no long-term side effects, as confirmed in more than 250 clinical trials conducted globally in the past two decades, while the history of human adenoviruses use in vaccine development started in 1953. (Related story, August 24, 2021: FDA okays EUA for Russian single-dose vax Sputnik Light)