AstraZeneca Teams up with Russia's Sputnik V Vaccine for COVID-19 Trials

Russia says Sputnik V has a 90 percent efficacy rate, but some Western scientists are concerned about the pace of its rollout.

AstraZeneca, a UK pharmaceutical giant, will start clinical trials to test a combination of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine with Russia's Sputnik V shot, in a bid to boost the efficacy of the British drug maker's vaccine.

Moscow is likely to see the move as a vote of confidence in Sputnik V.

AstraZeneca, once seen as a frontrunner, has an average efficacy rate of 70.4 percent.

Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline vaccine trials show insufficient immune response in older people

Trials will start by the end of the year, according to Russia's sovereign wealth fund, which has funded Sputnik V. The vaccine trial was named after the Soviet-era satellite that triggered the space race.

AstraZeneca said in a statement it was considering how it could assess combinations of different vaccines, adding that it would begin exploring with Russia's Gamaleya Institute, which developed Sputnik V, whether two common cold virus-based vaccines could be successfully combined. It did not give further details.

The news came as France's Sanofi and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline said clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine showed an insufficient immune response in older people.

The setback came on the same day as Australia's domestic vaccine project was abandoned and is also a blow for many governments that have booked hundreds of millions of doses of the shot, including the European Union, United States, and Britain.

The two companies said they planned to start another study next February, hoping to come up with a more effective vaccine by the end of 2021.

The co-operation between one of Britain's most valuable listed companies and the state-backed Russian science research institute highlights the pressure to develop an effective shot to fight the pandemic, which has killed more than 1.5 million people worldwide.

Its Russian developers say clinical trials, still underway, have shown it has an efficacy rate of over 90 percent, higher than AstraZeneca's own vaccine and similar to US rivals Pfizer and Moderna.