Vaccination with the Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus

Home » Articles » Detailed analysis of the Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus. All the pros and cons

Not long ago, mass free vaccination of the population began in Moscow, where everyone who wants to is vaccinated with Sputnik-V. Several months later, interest in the Russian “cure for coronavirus” has only grown stronger, and the number of volunteers is also constantly increasing.

However, residents of the country are still worried about how safe the vaccine is and whether it will help prevent infection. MedinHome specialists will answer all your questions: they will explain how the drug works, how its effectiveness was tested, what is included in the vaccine, and also compare its pros and cons.

Mechanism of action of the vaccine

In order to understand the principles of operation of Gam-COVID-Vac, you need to turn to the basics of biology and understand how the body’s natural defense works. So, the immune system easily recognizes any pathogen, be it a bacterium, fungus, parasite or virus, as in our case. All these pathogenic particles consist of different elements by nature, but the trigger for the human body most often becomes a specific component of the cell - it is called an antigen.

This substance may be:

protein or polysaccharide (most often);
lipid or nucleic acid - only in combination with protein;
a simple substance, for example, a metal - only in combination with a protein (such an antigen will be called a haptogen).

In order to develop natural immunity to a disease, the following sequence is needed:

Entry of a pathogenic microorganism into the human body.
Identification by the immune system of the antibody - the main target.
The production of specific particles that will attack the antibody - antigens.
The subsequent entry of the pathogen will not require time to recognize and synthesize antigens; the “attack” and destruction will occur almost instantly.

Thus, if the virus is unchanged, a person will get sick once and will not be able to become infected again - as, for example, is the case with chickenpox. Influenza viruses love to mutate, which is why epidemics occur every year. Yes, vaccines slightly weaken the course of the disease, but cannot completely prevent infection, since the structure of the pathogen changes slightly each time.

In general, immunization is a way of acquiring artificial immunity. A person does not have to be ill to receive antibodies, because the vaccine will deliver them to the body from the outside.

Interesting! Scientists are still only theorizing how variable the SARS-CoV-2 virus is. Not long ago, new types of pathology were recorded (for example, the VUI-202012/01 mutation in Britain), which were considered more contagious - they may require the development of a new drug. However, even in this case, Sputnik will help the body quickly recognize and eliminate the virus until specific vaccines are created.

What? Where? When?

In accordance with the official vaccination calendar, children are given basic vaccinations until they are 2 years old, and then they are repeated before school. In the first 12 hours of your baby doll's life, he will receive an injection against hepatitis B. But many experts say that there is no point in it. There is simply nowhere for an infant to get this sore. After all, the virus is transmitted only through blood or sexual intercourse. All instruments for transfusion, injections and dentistry are disposable, and the baby is still far from sexual life. Also in the maternity hospital you will be offered another vaccine: protection against tuberculosis - BCG - will be injected into the baby's shoulder. It can be ignored if your family lives in Miami, where this disease has already been forgotten. But, according to doctors, it is necessary in Russia. Unfortunately, this disease has not yet been defeated. And then, when the child turns one year old, he will undergo a Mantoux test - a test of how well the antibodies to tuberculosis that have appeared in the body work.

The next vaccine the baby will encounter is against polio. Until recently, we only had live vaccines for this disease. They were released in the form of droplets into the mouth. There are many rumors and fears among mothers that it is from such a vaccination that a child can get polio. Experts say that they have not encountered such reactions in practice, but they do not deny the theoretical probability of their occurrence. Therefore, it is better to vaccinate babies under one year old with the Western analogue of this vaccine, which contains a dead virus. The imported vaccine is a solution for intramuscular injections. Later, when the child grows up, you can switch to “live” droplets. The complex vaccine against whooping cough, diphtheria and tetanus - DTP - administered from 3 months is the least favorite of both mothers and babies. She is “famous” for causing severe reactions in many toddlers. Therefore, children with allergies are either not injected with it at all, or they use a lighter version - ADSM. This vaccine does not contain whooping cough, which provokes fever or allergic manifestations. After the baby turns one year old, it’s time for a cocktail of classic childhood diseases - measles, rubella and mumps. This vaccination is easily tolerated and practically does not cause severe reactions, despite the fact that measles and rubella vaccines are always “live”. Before refusing the DTP vaccine for fear that your baby doll will experience the delights of its side effects, weigh the pros and cons. Keep in mind that it is difficult to diagnose and treat tetanus, and it can appear even due to a small abrasion. The situation is even worse with diphtheria: a child vaccinated against it will have a mild form of the disease, and one who does not have protective antibodies may die.

The importance of vaccination: herd immunity

Vaccination against coronavirus infection is a matter of mass safety. If a person is vaccinated, he will not only be most likely protected from pathology, but will also be able to help other patients for whom the injection is contraindicated.

Unfortunately, not all residents of Russia will be able to get vaccinated safely. The main contraindications are:

pathologies of the immune system - HIV, AIDS, oncology;
allergic reaction to one or more components of the drug.

What should such patients do? They can only be protected by living in a vaccinated community, because it will be difficult for the coronavirus to circulate among vaccinated people - this is the power of herd immunity.

This is important not only for patients with contraindications, but also for other people. It is known that not a single vaccine in the world can guarantee 100% protection against the disease to a vaccinated person, and collective immunity will not provide 100% safety to an unvaccinated person. However, the combination of these two phenomena significantly reduces the risks of infection for both groups.

Disadvantages of vaccinations for children

The disadvantages are not as significant as the above advantages. However, they exist and are alarmingly ambiguous. Officially confirmed data is not an indicator for modern parents, but horrifying articles that are not supported by anything often become the reason for refusal:

It is generally accepted that preventive medicine weakens the child’s own immunity.
Any vaccine cannot guarantee that the baby will not get sick.
This is a burden on the immune system; parents are not sure that it is worth putting such a strain on the baby’s body in the first year of life.
Contained antibodies and toxoids can harm not only the virus, but also cause harm to health in the future.
Some types of vaccines disrupt the development of the immune system even in the maternity hospital.
Post-vaccination complications can lead to serious health problems.
Modern types of vaccinations are not as effective against diseases as doctors insist.

Parents are afraid of toxicity . Before getting a vaccine, many try to find out how dangerous the disease against which it is being given is. And are the risks associated with this comparable? The decision-making factor is the baby’s health status, because administering a vaccine is a very big burden on the body. A separate danger is parents' concerns about the quality of medications. But do they understand that by refusing vaccinations, they are putting other children at risk?

Will the new drug help?

Gam-COVID-Vac was carefully studied in preclinical trials on small and large animals - so experts sought to prove safety and possible toxicity, as well as immunogenicity.

Scientists specifically selected the most sensitive representatives of mammals (Syrian hamsters and various primates) in order to assess all risks as accurately as possible. Positive results of the study allowed us to move on to the next stage.

Tests on volunteers

Information about the first studies was published in early autumn 2021 - the first and second phases involved 76 people. Experts noted that side effects are minimal, and no deaths have been recorded, so we can move on to the third phase.

It started on September 7, the end of testing was on November 24. Features of the third phase:

a huge number of subjects, which made it possible to obtain accurate statistics (more than 16,000 people, with 5,435 being placed in the placebo group);
Efficiency up to 95% has been recorded;
most adverse reactions are group 1, that is, mild (7485 cases were documented).

Scientists also recorded serious side effects (68 events), however, none of them were associated with vaccination.

Safety

According to research, the majority of those vaccinated do not experience side effects (85%), while the remaining 15% experience mild discomfort:

hyperthermia - increase in temperature to 38-39 degrees;
muscle and headache;
weakness, irritability;
redness at the injection site.

Experts clarify: theoretically, vaccination can complicate the course of various genetic pathologies, but is not capable of causing them - hereditary diseases, in principle, cannot be directly provoked by external factors. This applies mainly to chronic autoimmune diseases, because Sputnik V activates natural immunity.

Speaking about the safety of a person who has been vaccinated with two doses of the vaccine, it is worth considering that the drug was created on an adenoviral vector, which was first used back in the 70s of the last century. The technology is considered harmless, as proven by a lot of research over the past 50 years.

It is important to know! Using this platform, three different drugs for vaccination against Ebola were recently created. According to the latest data, more than 60,000 people have received the vaccine in Africa, China and Russia. The technology also made it possible to release two experimental cancer drugs that successfully completed 250 trials. Thus, viral vectors are not a new platform, but they are a very effective one.

Efficiency mark

Another reason why residents of the Russian Federation still doubt whether to get vaccinated is mass criticism by foreign experts. However, evidence of effectiveness in the form of reports on studies of the drug on volunteers was published just a month after the drug was presented to the public.

The final data, presented in The Lancet in early February of this year:

group from 18 to 30 years old - average efficiency 91.9%;
group from 31 to 40 years old - average efficiency 90.0%;
group from 41 to 50 years old - average efficiency 91.3%;
group from 51 to 60 years old - average efficiency 92.7%;
group over 61 years old - average efficiency 91.8%.

Thus, the overall effectiveness for the entire population was 91.54%. The same study analyzed the indicator depending on the time elapsed after intramuscular administration of the drug:

immediately after the first injection - up to 73.1%;
two weeks after the first injection - 87.6%.

The maximum effectiveness is achieved after the second dose of Sputnik-V.

After the publication of these studies, many foreign experts changed their opinion. Dean Winslow, an infectious disease physician at Stanford Medical Center, spoke positively about the Russian vaccine, believing that it will play a significant role in the fight against the disease.

A specialist in the same profile, Daniel Kuritskis, head of the Harvard Medical School, noted not only the effectiveness, but also the huge advantage of the vaccine in the form of ease of storage - standard refrigerators are enough to maintain the quality of the drug. This makes it easier to deliver the medicine to areas where it is difficult to reach suitable temperatures for conventional vaccines.

Healthy Family clinic of evidence-based pediatrics

Nowadays, there is more and more controversy about the advisability of vaccination. There are two opposing opinions in society. Proponents see vaccines as a panacea for serious infections. Opponents believe that vaccinations can negatively affect a child's health. Now parents have the right at the legislative level to refuse vaccination. Let's consider the pros and cons of such an important decision.

What is vaccination

A vaccine is a drug that stimulates the production of immunity against dangerous infectious diseases. A vaccine is created based on weakened or killed microorganisms of infectious agents, which, when entering the body, do not cause disease, but produce antibodies to the infection.

Vaccination or vaccination is the introduction of a vaccine into the body in order to create immunity to various infections. After which, the body produces protective antibodies to certain types of pathogens. When an infection occurs, the immune system is already ready to prevent a dangerous disease. Thus, we have the opportunity not to suffer from diseases that in the past claimed millions of lives.

What is the point of vaccination?

Nowadays, there are threats of mass epidemics from some infectious diseases, so the problem of protecting citizens from serious diseases is being solved at the state level. In this regard, a National Vaccination Calendar has been developed, which includes a list of vaccines against dangerous infections that are indicated for all healthy children. The list of vaccines in the calendar may be supplemented depending on the epidemiological situation. But vaccines against tuberculosis, polio, viral hepatitis B, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, mumps, rubella, measles and Haemophilus influenzae are mandatory.

The calendar takes into account the age of the child and the timing of the administration of a particular drug. Mass vaccination makes it possible to create collective immunity, which is of great importance for children's institutions and which makes it possible to curb the development of dangerous diseases among the population.

Vaccines that are not included in the list of mandatory vaccinations are paid for. They protect children from rotavirus, meningococcal, pneumococcal infections, and chickenpox. Such diseases are dangerous and entail severe complications, so they are recommended for children.

Contraindications to vaccination

The World Health Organization has established some contraindications for vaccination. This includes, for example, a severe anaphylactic reaction to a previous vaccine. Immunodeficiency conditions and the presence of a malignant tumor will be a contraindication for live BCG vaccines, against rotavirus infection, rubella, measles, mumps, and polio. There are few real contraindications for vaccinations, and all of them require clinical confirmation.

When not to vaccinate

If a child has a chronic disease, it is necessary to vaccinate only during the period of remission and obtain permission from the specialist who is seeing the child.

If the baby had a cold or ARVI before vaccination, then vaccination should be postponed for a period of one week to a month. If a child has suffered diseases such as tonsillitis, pneumonia, infectious diseases (mumps, scarlet fever, rubella, measles, chickenpox), vaccination should be carried out no earlier than a month later. Vaccination is postponed for six months if the baby has pyelonephritis.

Some parents have concerns about vaccinating children with allergies. There is no need to worry, and such children need to be vaccinated, since they are more susceptible to diseases. Vaccinations do not affect the development of allergic diseases and do not increase sensitivity to anything. But you should not get vaccinated during an exacerbation of the disease. In such a situation, you should wait until the allergic manifestation passes and only then vaccinate the child.

Vaccination rules

Before vaccination, you must take your temperature. Then the pediatrician examines the child to rule out colds, rashes, etc. A child is allowed to be vaccinated if he is absolutely healthy. Only then can you get high-quality protection after vaccination and not strain the child’s immune system.

The doctor should be aware if the child had contact with an infectious patient on the eve of vaccination. Also tell the doctor if your child has any reactions to the vaccination given to the wound.

The interval between vaccinations should be at least four weeks. An exception may be tetanus and rabies vaccines in emergency situations.

Vaccination is carried out by medical workers. You must be under medical supervision for half an hour after vaccination, as various reactions to the vaccine may occur during this period. Next, you need to monitor the baby for four days. For any deviations, the child should be examined by a doctor.

On the day of vaccination, create gentle conditions for the baby, protect him from additional stress, such as active sports, physiotherapeutic procedures, and x-rays.

To avoid allergic reactions during vaccination and to avoid additional stress on the body, do not introduce new unfamiliar foods into your baby’s diet. Try to ensure that your meals the day before and after vaccination consist of familiar and easily digestible foods. Make sure your child drinks more. Give him water, compote, berry tea. Do not feed your child 1 hour before vaccination.

Babies prone to allergic reactions need to take antihistamines a couple of days before vaccination and for three days after it.

After vaccination, to protect your baby from viruses and bacteria, limit contact with strangers. But during this period you can walk in the fresh air. And at home, provide your child with a healthy atmosphere - clean and humid air, let the room temperature be no higher than 22 degrees.

Complications after vaccination

After the vaccine is administered, the body will build immunity and produce antibodies against the specific infection. For each child, depending on the individual characteristics of the body, the timing and quality of the formation of immunity will occur differently. And each child will react differently to the vaccine in general. Reactions can occur in the form of an increase in temperature, a disturbance in the general condition, etc.

Recently, the quality of vaccines has increased significantly, and therefore, for many years, no serious complications have been identified after vaccination. But despite careful testing of vaccines, the development of individual reactions cannot be predicted. Therefore, in rare cases, minor complications may occur after vaccination.

For example, after vaccination against whooping cough, diphtheria and tetanus, 10% of children develop a fever. But such a reaction is considered normal, it is temporary and not severe. The protection that vaccination provides against these infections more than justifies these cases.

What are the dangers of refusing vaccinations?

During the Soviet Union, there were no outbreaks of dangerous diseases such as polio or whooping cough in the country. At that time, vaccination of children was carried out everywhere and the consent of parents or guardians was not required for vaccination. Dangerous infectious diseases avoided children, or the diseases were mild without serious complications.

Nowadays, there is a wave of refusal to vaccinate, and against this background, polio was brought to us from developing countries, which quickly spread among the population. Urgent vaccination among children and citizens who arrived to us helped to cope with the epidemic. Now, with a sharp increase in the flow of migrants, such serious diseases as hepatitis and tuberculosis are common in our country. Despite opposing views on the rationality of vaccinations, vaccination actually makes it possible to protect against outbreaks of deadly infections. Mass vaccination (95% of the population) against any infection makes it possible to protect the entire population without allowing an epidemic to develop.

Consequences of refusing vaccination

Some families still decide not to vaccinate their baby. In such a situation, parents should carefully monitor the health of the unprotected baby and take all possible measures to strengthen the immune system. To avoid infection of a child, it is necessary to strictly observe sanitary and hygienic standards in a world full of germs and viruses.

An unvaccinated child will have certain restrictions in visiting childcare facilities, due to the high risk of contracting dangerous diseases. For example, during quarantine, due to some infection, an unvaccinated child will be forced to stay at home until the end of the incubation period. In children's institutions, an unvaccinated child should not be near people who have received a polio vaccine within two months, as he may become infected with this dangerous disease.

Such a baby should also be careful when communicating with children outside the kindergarten. It is advisable for the child to spend time only with healthy children, play with his own, thoroughly washed toys and strictly observe hygiene standards. It is not surprising that such restrictions can affect his further mental development.

When traveling abroad, you need to know that staying in certain countries, in accordance with international health regulations, requires specific vaccinations. Therefore, an unvaccinated child may be prohibited from traveling to such a country.

Also, an unvaccinated child will be denied employment in the future if there is a risk of infection. The list of such specialties is quite extensive and includes specialties from various fields. If this happens, the person will still be forced to take the vaccinations that his parents protected him from.

Feasibility of vaccination

Today, the child's parents are given the right to choose whether to agree or refuse vaccination. And many parents refuse, citing various reasons for their decision - personal, medical, religious. Often parents do not decide to get vaccinated, fearing post-vaccination complications in their baby. Such fears are caused by an anti-vaccination campaign launched in the media by incompetent journalists, as well as by incorrect vaccination prescriptions and incorrect vaccination by some doctors who did not take into account the personal characteristics of children. As a result of frequent refusals of vaccinations, the incidence of whooping cough and diphtheria has increased, and sometimes these diseases have very dire consequences for children. Any vaccines are many times safer than infection from it!

Some parents think that if they protect the baby from contact with sick children, feed them properly and condition them, then they can do without vaccination. But, alas, this is not a guarantee of child protection. We live in a world where there are a huge number of microorganisms that cause dangerous infections. Vaccines are the best, and for some species, the only protection against such diseases.

Now we are not familiar with many terrible infections that once destroyed entire cities. The history of the fight against these diseases remains in books, and it is similar to war chronicles with countless losses and crippled lives. The invention of the first vaccines in the 18th century helped contain and prevent the emergence of new terrible epidemics. Nowadays, vaccination is a powerful preventive method in the fight against infections. Modern technologies make it possible to produce new generation vaccines, which are an effective and safe way of protection.

It is up to the parents to decide whether or not to vaccinate their child. But before you make such an important decision, you need to remember that it is better to prevent a disease than to treat it and get serious complications.

What does the drug consist of?

As stated, Gam-COVID-Vac is produced biochemically, that is, specialists do not need the pathogen SARS-CoV-2 during the synthesis. The drug has two main components:

The first component is a recombinant adenovirus vector based on serotype 26 (rAd26 variety). It carries a certain protein, similar to which is included in the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The second component is an adenovirus vector based on serotype 5 (rAd5 variety). It is also supplemented with a protein that is similar to the antigen of the virus that causes the disease.

In addition, like any vaccine, Sputnik-V has additional components - preservatives and stabilizers, which significantly increase the shelf life of the drug. These components help preserve the medicine both during long-term storage and during transportation.

Official registration

Many sources call Sputnik-V the world's first vaccine against Covid, but this is not entirely true. Indeed, the drug was registered earlier than similar developments by other pharmaceutical companies. However, BNT162b2 (a joint American-German project of Pfizer & BioNTech) is considered the first vaccine, which completed clinical trials earlier than all others.

However, the Russian drug does not lag behind in these indicators. Proof of this is information from the RDIF CEO, who stated that Sputnik is considered one of the massively approved drugs - this was confirmed by regulatory authorities in 42 countries (data as of March 4, 2021).

The list of states that are ready to be vaccinated with our vaccine includes:

Belarus;
Argentina;
Serbia;
Hungary;
UAE;
Pakistan;
Iran;
Armenia;
Mexico;
Mongolia;
Kazakhstan;
Sri Lanka;
Uzbekistan;
San Marino and other states.

The European Medicines Agency is actively involved in the examination of the Russian vaccine to confirm compliance with the standards of safety, effectiveness and declared quality. This will expand the list of countries that will order the drug from the Russian Federation - the organization believes that additional verification and subsequent approval will help provide the vaccine to more than 50 million residents.

Also, according to the director of the RDIF, the terms of the contract of other countries with Russia include permission to produce 1,400 million doses of the drug. This is enough to vaccinate 700 million people. Moreover, some states (for now these are China and South Korea) will produce Sputnik on their territory, ensuring delivery to other territories.

Development of vaccination and rabies control

Convinced of the effectiveness of smallpox vaccination, 19th century doctors continued to study weakened bacteria based on Pasteur's method. The next disease that doctors decided to vaccinate en masse was rabies. In 1886, a laboratory was opened in Odessa, where they began to vaccinate against this disease. There weren't many people willing, but the fear of those bitten by wild animals outweighed their fear of vaccination.

The Pasteur method was used for quite a long time, and only by the eighties of the 20th century, biologists divided vaccination methods into three types: live vaccines, “dead” and chemically active.

A live vaccine is based on the Pasteur method, when microorganisms are artificially weakened so that they do not pose a significant danger to the patient’s body.

“Dead” vaccines are made from “deactivated” microorganisms that are killed by heat treatment, radioactive or ultraviolet radiation, etc. At the same time, the vaccine retains its properties and can be used as a full-fledged vaccination against the disease.

The situation is most difficult with chemically active vaccines. They are obtained artificially at the cellular level using complex manipulations. In fact, they are not created from microbes, but from individual elements called antigens.

The greatest attention in modern medicine is paid to vaccination of newborn children. At birth, the baby’s body is subjected to a sharp attack by various infections and viruses, many of which are fatal. Many factors contribute to strengthening a newborn’s immunity, including breastfeeding, because with mother’s milk the child receives the necessary antigens that help fight diseases. But sometimes it happens that feeding is impossible, or the mother is not entirely healthy. In such cases, it is very important to trust your doctor and consider the need for vaccination.

The decision to mass vaccination of newborns in the USSR was made only in 1962, but, fortunately, it has become a common practice and is currently adopted at the legislative level.

Pros and cons of vaccination

In order to draw a final conclusion about the benefits of vaccination, the pros and cons of using the drug Gam-COVID-Vac should be analyzed. The advantages include:

The ability to protect yourself from a severe course of the disease - vaccinated patients tolerate coronavirus infection much easier, and the risk of complications is lower.
Increasing herd immunity. This will not only help protect those who cannot be vaccinated, but will also effectively reduce the spread of Covid-19 - thus helping to overcome the pandemic faster.
There will be no problems visiting other countries in the future. Some sources plan to introduce restrictions on the entry of tourists who have not been vaccinated.

Disadvantages of vaccination:

You may have to be vaccinated regularly - once every two years or a little less often, since two doses of Sputnik are not enough to obtain permanent immunity.
Approximately 15% of the population may experience side effects - however, they are limited to muscle pain, headache, and a short-term increase in temperature.

Despite several shortcomings, the administration of two doses of Sputnik-V is an excellent protection for the population against the spread of coronavirus infection. All myths about the dangers of vaccination have long been dispelled, so there is no need to shy away from vaccinations.

Important! You should carefully prepare for the procedure and study which foods or medications you should temporarily avoid - your doctor should definitely tell you about this. For example, even small concentrations of alcohol in the blood can change the spectrum of side effects from vaccination. If the patient suddenly rested the day before, drinking alcohol, it is advisable to give an IV before the procedure - this will significantly reduce the risk of an adverse reaction to the vaccine. We can make an alcohol drip at your home - take care of your health and contact MedinHome specialists. We will carry out the procedure simply and painlessly, and you will be able to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2!

The benefits of vaccinations for children

First of all, you need to consider the advantages and disadvantages. Only after this can an informed decision be made. By assessing the risks of complications and comparing them with the treatment of dangerous diseases, you can allow or prohibit vaccination of your own child.

Tetanus, polio and other diseases can lead to death. Only preventive vaccination can protect the baby.
If the disease overtakes a slightly vaccinated patient, then it proceeds easier and faster, and fewer complications appear.
Modern preventive medications are much easier to tolerate in children than in the past. They cause minimal reaction in the body and are safer.
It is safer to vaccinate than to treat with heavy drugs for a deadly disease.
Massive failure will lead to epidemics and the rise of diseases that have long been forgotten.
The risk of mortality from severe illness is much worse than the consequences of preventative medications.

Vaccinating a child according to the calendar is the right of parents . Many pediatricians insist that for each small patient it is necessary to draw up an individual vaccination schedule according to epidemiological indications. This will significantly reduce risks and protect immunity. One of the advantages is a reduction in the overall infant mortality rate. The projected mortality rates in the event of a massive refusal to vaccinate are terrifying.