MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th March, 2021) Several employees of the Moscow-based Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology were revaccinated with Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, Denis Logunov, the deputy director of the institute, said on Sunday.
"Some of the employees were vaccinated a long time ago, and a number of them, the elderly, have been revaccinated, with very good response," Logunov said on air Channel One.
Last week, an epidemiologist at Russia's consumer rights watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said that reimmunization with the adenovirus-based Sputnik V vaccine would not be effective, as the antibodies developed after the first inoculations would neutralize and block the components of the newly-administered shots, making them redundant. Later, Alexander Gintsburg, the director of Gamaleya Institute, which developed the vaccine, pushed back by saying that repeated immunization with Sputnik V was possible and was likely to be more effective than the first one.
During the pandemic, Russia was at the forefront of vaccine development, having come up with three different coronavirus vaccines � Sputnik V, EpiVacCorona, developed by the Siberian research center Vector, and the Chumakov research institute's CoviVac.
In February, peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet published an interim analysis from Phase 3 clinical trial of Sputnik V, showing its 91.6-percent efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19. The vaccine has already been approved in over 55 countries.
