President Vladimir Putin recently announced that a team of Russian scientists had developed a Covid-19 vaccine and that it had been approved for use by the regulators – at least, in Russia.
First, let’s look at what type of vaccine this is. The vaccine “platform” used in this study used adenoviruses. These common cold viruses, called Ad5 and Ad26, are made safe and are incapable of growing in the body. They only function to deliver the genetic code of one of the novel coronavirus proteins, called the spike protein, into a cell.
The Lancet paper outlines acceptable safety data, even with the high dose used. These safety results are not unexpected as the safety of several adenovirus-based vaccines for different diseases has been demonstrated in earlier research. The levels of neutralising antibodies were quite low in this study, compared with other published vaccine trials. So too were the T cell responses .