Russia Approves Its First COVID-19 Vaccine

The Russian Direct Investment Fund today announced that the Sputnik V vaccine had been granted full permanent approval by Russia's Health Ministry. It had previously held temporary emergency use authorization, the world's first.

Since the Sputnik V vaccine was authorized on August 11, 2020, it has been authorized in 71 countries with a total population of over 4 billion people.

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) has not Listed the Sputnik V vaccine for Authorization as of February 4, 2022.

The WHO has Listed ten other COVID-19 vaccines.

As of January 27, 2022, the U.S. NIH OpenData Portal reported the Sputnick V vaccine's in vitro therapeutic activity against SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus variants.

In May 2020, the Gamaleya National Research Centre of Epidemiology and Microbiology announced that it had developed the Sputnik V (Gam-COVID-Vac), produced with the HEK293 cell line.

Sputnik is based on adenovirus DNA, in which the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus gene is integrated. It is an adenoviral-based, two-part vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

Adenovirus is used as a "container" to deliver the coronavirus gene to cells and start synthesizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus's envelope proteins, "introducing" the immune system to a potential enemy. 

The cells then use the gene to produce the spike protein. A person's immune system will treat this spike protein as foreign and produce natural defenses, antibodies, and T cells, against this protein.