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| Science & Technology | |
| Brazil rejects Sputnik V vaccine, says it's tainted with replicating cold virus | |
| 2021-04-30 | |
| From Ars Technica I have come to dislike Ars Technica for their unrelenting leftism, but I sometimes use them as sources because they're a prime example of how leftists sometimes notice the individual facts, right before they fail to integrate them.
Health regulators in Brazil say that doses of Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine contain a cold-causing virus capable of replicating in human cells. The unintended presence of the virus in the vaccine can "lead to infections in humans and can cause damage and death, especially in people with low immunity and respiratory problems, among other health problems," Brazil’s Health Regulatory Agency, Anvisa, said Wednesday in a translated statement. Russia has unequivocally denied the claim, lobbed legal threats at Anvisa, and accused the respected regulators of being politically motivated to reject the vaccine. Still, Brazil’s findings raise serious questions about the quality and safety of the vaccine, which is now being used in many countries. The findings also support concerns of Slovak regulators, who said earlier this month that batches of Sputnik V they received did not "have the same characteristics and properties" as the Sputnik V vaccine that was described in a peer-reviewed publication and found to be 91.6 percent effective. Moreover, quality-control issues weren’t the end of Anvisa’s concerns. In an overall evaluation of the Russian vaccine, Brazil’s regulators found its safety and efficacy were based on insufficient, limited, and sometimes faulty data and analyses. "Flaws... were identified in all stages of clinical studies," Anvisa said. The agency also reported that its inspectors who traveled to Russia to assess the vaccine’s production were barred from vaccine facilities at Gamaleya Institute, which developed Sputnik V. In a vote late Monday, Anvisa’s five directors unanimously denied the importation and use of the Sputnik V vaccine in Brazil. Prior to the decision, 14 states and two municipalities had requested imports of the vaccine, Anvisa said. Dire state Brazil is currently being ravaged by the pandemic coronavirus, including a more-transmissible variant, P.1, which may evade some immune responses. The latest surge of infections peaked late last month at over 100,000 new cases in a single day. In turn, deaths peaked at over 4,000 a day in early April. New daily case counts have now fallen to a seven-day average of around 57,000 cases, which is still very high. To date, more than 14.5 million people have been infected in the country of around 211 million. Nearly 400,000 people have died. | |
| Posted by:Thing From Snowy Mountain |